1. zone — girdle, belt, cestus
Such his charm and then his force that at the end of this unequal warfare she threw away her virgin zone and ever after they cleaved together like the antient Mother and Father of our human race.
2. haycock — hay heaped into a cone
We sat against the one haycock which lay beneath the shade of the old oak at the corner of the field, eating our bread and onion, watching the clouds, and speaking quite volubly of nothing at all.
3. vexillology — study of flags
Whereas once the quadrennial Olympics were an opportunity for impromptu vexillology lessons, now modern television graphics have relegated each country’s flag to a tiny box of vague color somewhere among a mass of statistics, blurbs, and photos of the various athletes in an array of striking poses.
4. incommensurable — without a common standard of comparison, having no shared basis of measure; entirely disproportionate
Though the accountants may use the same numbers to tally up your paltry income and that of the wealthiest CEOs and ‘capitalists’, in reality the gulf between your existences is incommensurable, for you shall always be burdened by the knowledge that every act, every purchase, every choice, has a price, which cost is as nothing to that other class.
5. syncretic — joining or reconciling diverse beliefs or practices
But the wild and varied beliefs of the Hippie Frontier crashed against the rock of fundamentalist American religion, the latter itself a syncretic meld of “hoorah!” jingoistic patriotism, almost misunderstood sacred texts, and a vague nostalgic recollection of the church practices of their ancestors.
6. monotonically — in or with a monotone; [mathematics] (of a function) generating ever-increasing or -decreasing values ad seriatum
I thought I’d found a monotonically increasing correlation between my alcohol consumption and my social prowess, but was unprepared for the sudden and catastrophic collapse of my wave function.
7. dedecorate — to dishonor; to stain, to disfigure
Your favors to dishonest men allow those rapscallions to dedecorate the high office to which you have been called.
8. mortmain — inalienable ownership
Though of course the Rule Against Perpetuities has its place, dissolving the barriers against fair taxation which mortmain erected, the destruction of that latter principle also dovetails with the modern penchant to think of nothing—absolutely nothing—as exempt from sale, perhaps up to and including those so-called “inalienable rights” which Jefferson so highly spoke of.
9. wily beguily (also wilie beguilie) — [obsolete] crafty person caught by their own trickery
Had he been less cunning he would succeeded, but by playing wily beguily he caught only himself with his cleverness, and succeeded only in placing a hempen collar about his own neck, which will forever mar his drinking.
10. perorally — by mouth
The patient must have nothing perorally for twenty-four hours before the surgery.
Bonus Vocabulary
(British food)
bread and scrape — bread and dripping, toast with melted-away fat from roasting meat; bread with thinnest amount of butter applied
As he grew older and as his economic circumstances became a trifle less dire, his tastes grew more catholic and his larder became less barren, but he never lost his love of the simplest dishes of his impecunious youth, such as the rare treat of bread and scrape (though even he would confess to gilding the lily somewhat, adding jelly to the drippings on his fancy wheat toast).