1. vicissitudes — ups and downs, recurring changes
And as he stood there in the sunshine contemplating the various and impenetrable vicissitudes of life, he was stung behind the ear by a gnat.
2. scabrous — having a rough surface, scaly; difficult, harsh; obscene, indecent
He blamed his rubicund and scabrous complexion upon the sulfides in the red wine he frequently drank.
3. pinchbeck — alloy of copper and zinc supposed to resemble gold; counterfeit, spurious; tawdry
They won’t bind him over, even though they caught him selling pinchbeck watches to the swells, ’cause he’s too wise to claim it was anything like real gold.
4. coprolite — petrified animal excrement
Anti-evolutionists contemporary with Darwin preached that the coprolite was actually a previously undiscovered animal, rather than fossilized dung.
5. monkey nut — [British] peanut, ground-nut
The floor was covered with monkey nut shells but the bowls on the bar were empty.
6. Gytrash (also Guytrash, Guytresh) — [Britsh] legendary animal apparition of lonely country roads and paths, variously appearing as a large black dog or horse or even a cow
I saw him, I tell you, the Gytrash with huge coal-black eyes and flames beneath his cloven feet, right up on Snooks’ Hill as I came out of the coppice past the ruined mill.
7. polemic — controversial, disputatious
Though he reveled in polemic discourse I always had the strange suspicion that at heart he held close some deeply held beliefs, fervent ideas that might have seemed quite conservative, even pedestrian were he to reveal them to the world at large.
8. tumbrel — two-wheeled wooden cart, esp. that used to convey persons to the guillotine during the French Revolution
And so once again the spectre of the guillotine and the tumbrels is seen all across Europe, history once again repeating an old play for lack of better ideas.
9. hellgrammite — neuropterous insect larva, used often as fishing bait
Be careful with that can of hellgrammites, as they’re likely to bite you when you grab them distracted by the beauty of the river.
10. tent — [Scots] heed, attention; to attend, to take heed
Be sure to take tent as you go through the cave’s entrance to stay far on the right side, as there’s a treacherous bit on the left where many a man’s been left with a bleeding head wound.
Bonus Vocabulary
(idiom)
nineteen to the dozen — going on rapidly without cease, usu. of speech
Priscilla was rabbiting nineteen to the dozen about the latest excesses of the revisions to last year’s trade agreements, so we knew she’d been possessed by some bureaucratic demon.