1. haggard — appearing worn, exhausted, gaunt, esp. as result of privation or anxiety; wild-looking
Even in the better light of the foyer, I could hardly believe that the haggard and desperate wretch before me was my former lab partner from school, the ruddy-cheeked fair-haired boy who scoffed at peril and laughed at adversity.
2. armamentarium — materials and methods for performing given duties
Just as Bartlett’s was an essential element in the armamentarium of George Will’s quote-boy, so too is a subscription or at least access to every known streaming service a requirement for the modern culture critic.
3. procreant — pertaining to procreation; generating, begetting
Though we had hoped that this wave of capitalists were impelled by the procreant urge to foster more and better companies producing more and better products, once more we found that their stated high motives were driven instead by the baser compulsion to engender more and more money to join the overlarge brood of currency they already had.
4. toponymic — of or related to the study of place names
But the tension between the slower pace of traditional naming conventions and more modern toponymic commodification is shown in the persistent usage of disused or disowned appellations such as Pac Bell Park, San Francisco General, or (in perhaps a more ironic manner) Enron Field.
5. sapid — having a pleasurable taste; having flavor or a distinct taste; agreeable
Most unspoiled oils are devoid of sapid elements though of course small amounts of flavorful or odoriferous ingredients are sometimes added to specialty oils used in cooking.
6. hordeolum — [biology] stye
Running James was in later life a frequent sufferer of hordeola, perhaps due to his penchant for heavy black eye makeup in his youth, though as he would always point out during these outbreaks, none of the other members of the band ever endured the same complaint.
7. furore (also furor, in U.S.) — clamorous outbreak or uprising, commotion, to-do, outburst of public excitement or rage
The furore over the painting of the bold prostitute can hardly be imagined now, when art has become so inessential to daily life that current ‘artists’ are reduced to displaying the rotting corpses of aquatic creatures to earn even a few lines of virtual newsprint.
8. farthing — quarter-penny in the old £sd system of British money
“I wouldn’t give a bent farthing for the whole lot! And you should be ashamed to sell such things in your store!”
9. chamfer — to cut away material (usually at 45º) to make a join with another forming an edge or angle
The outermost walls of the castle have a chamfered arris which batter out some eight feet beyond the ground level.
10. advent — arrival, coming into being; (usu. Advent) ecclesiastical season during the four Sundays before the Nativity; (also usu. Advent) the coming of Christ into the world, thus sometimes the Second Coming
He was an old-fashioned person—though one could hardly call him a gentleman—indulging in reading, listening to phonographs, hiking, cooking, a whole host of activities which seemed to ignore the advent of cellular telephony.
Bonus Vocabulary
(British idiom)
belt-and-braces — being doubly cautious (as in use of both belt and braces (Briticism for suspenders) to hold up the trousers)
As it’s my life that’s to be suspended fifteen hundred feet in the air from a single cable, I don’t think it unwise to be a bit belt-and-braces about the technical and mechanical details.