1. mansuete — mild, gentle, meek
And so, my brother, I implore you to enter this holy season with a mansuete and humble inclination, turning your thoughts away from the recent unpleasantnesses.
2. emmet — ant
Consider the lowly emmet, too small to have large thoughts, yet still he has concern for his community and fellows, foraging always to feed the nest, rushing to protect his queen.
3. musth — period of heightened aggressiveness and sexual activity in male elephants
The onset of musth is accompanied by secretion from the glands just before the eyes, and its effects can be made much more manageable by providing the afflicted elephant with a mixture of camphor and opium.
4. luculent — lucid, clear; brilliant
Halsey was a wonderful minister, known for his luculent exegesis and his inspiring presence.
5. cromlech — dolmen, megalithic tomb
Excavations outside the perimeter of the cromlech revealed no other sign of occupation, save for a small deformed needle of bronze which may have been part of a clasp, found some twenty yards from the northernmost stone.
6. deciduous — shedding leaves annually; impermanent, transitory
During the breeding season the tufted puffin’s bill is enlarged by deciduous horny plates.
7. physic — medicine, esp. a purgative, laxative
Caution must be used in the application of a strong physic, particularly if internal hemorrhage is suspected.
8. cathexis — investment of emotional energy upon a specific thing; such energy invested
Thus we see how an object may have an erotic cathexis, but the same object may also have a cathexis of love, which is different, perhaps even very different.
9. barnburner — very exciting event; radical wing of New York Democrats in 19th Century
But the opening fight proved to be the real barnburner of the night, going the full fifteen rounds with both gladiators giving as good as they got, with the nod going to Kid Romeo, who won by only a single point.
10. diencephalon — back of the forebrain
Only the olfactory senses pass directly to the cerebrum; all other connections between the cerebrum and the nervous system are made through the diencephalon.
Bonus Vocabulary
(psychiatry, French)
folie à deux — delusion shared by a couple
But most later researchers believed that the lovers’ experiences were merely folie à deux, though only Professor Thornburgh declined to posit a more banal explanation for the reported phenomena.