1. mythomane — habitual liar, person compelled to fantasy or exaggeration
Perhaps the same deep-rooted psychological propensity towards lying made him the excellent salesman he became; certainly his skill and experience as an unusually clever mythomane helped him as an active bigamist—or perhaps one should say ‘trigamist’, though of course he never solemnized his relationship in another (illegal) ceremony with the third simultaneous mother of his children.
2. deponent — verb appearing only in passive form, but with active meaning; one who deposes, person making a deposition
“You forget, Mr. Higgins, that sequor is a deponent, that sequitur simply means ‘he is following’, and thus you’ll have to find another verb if you wish to say ‘he is followed’, my boy.”
3. devil’s hour — [idiom] witching hour, late hour of night at which supernatural happenings occur
Listening to the distant church bells solemnly toll four o’clock in the oppressive fog, I remembered that long ago TED Talk which spoke of the devil’s hour and, as I mused, I slowly became aware that I was being watched.
4. theurgist — practitioner of ‘white magic’ of Egyptian type, magician
At this time (after the False Synod) a dispute arose among the learned theurgists over the immortality of the so-called irrational demons, with Van Der Boeck strongly arguing in the negative.
5. Hibernian — of or related to Ireland; Irishman
Obviously some fierce struggle had taken place in the cellar, though only two bloody jackets remained of the combatants, looking like the lonesome tails of the fabled Hibernian cats.
6. fontanel (also fontanelle) — space between bones of the not fully sutured skull of an infant or fetus
Odie sat up all night with the weeping infant, rocking the child back and forth between her arms, trying to maintain hope as she stared silent and lorn at the pulsing beat of the blood vessel visible at her baby’s fontanel.
7. provant — allowance of food
“Only a half round of beef in your provant this week boys; we’re on tight rations until the rivers thaw or General Susker’s troops arrive.”
8. chamade — drum or trumpet signal inviting enemy to parley
“So beat the chamade Mr. Whalen, and for land’s sakes be sure to tell Captain Hodge to keep his men well out of sight!”.
9. replevin — legal action for return of distrained or taken goods or chattels
While it is likely we could attain a writ of replevin in this case, it is doubtful whether we could manage to gain the return of your four thousand sandwiches before the date of your “Big Boom Bad Boy Birthday Bash”, as you put it.
10. Chalcolithic — Eneolithic, of or related to the Copper Age
In most communities of the Chalcolithic period, of course, cold forging of found ore dense with metals was used to create the tools and weapons typical of the age, and only in a few widely separated areas are found traces of actual melting and casting of metals by nascent masters of metallurgy.
Bonus Vocabulary
(contemporary slangy sociology idiom)
LAT relationship — “Living Alone Together”, of couples in long-term relationships who still maintain separate residences and often lives apart from one another
This is probably it, he thought, but then again, we’ve been together for almost three years, and most LAT relationships don’t last nearly so long.