1. howe (also how) — barrow, tumulus
The aged king was laid in a great howe near the source of the river for which he was named.
2. riband — [archaic] ribbon, esp. a decorative one
But Jane’s new bright red riband couldn’t entirely hide the thin patches on her most festive headwear, and once more she wished so much they could afford a new hat—or hats, of course, since Mother’s was even more worn.
3. heteronym — identically spelled words with different meanings; different words naming the same thing; imaginary character used by author to write in different style, pseudonym
By showing the tangled consequences which follow the decision of the protagonist to hide his male identity behind a female heteronym, the author—behind his (or her) own pretentious nom de plume Reinhard de St. ffaulkes—wishes to delineate the intersecting and radiating spheres of modern identity, but, in the end, just leaves us all a bit confused, as I suspect the author himself (or herself) may have been by the time he (or she) arrived at the macabre courtroom scene, with its strange interplay of light and shadow and facts from documents opposed to facts from eyewitnesses, not all of whom seem to be precisely differentiated or even characterized.
4. boor — rude person; yokel; peasant
Yes, I quite understand why you had to invite him, the big boor, but I don’t see why you had to seat him next to Agatha, who is probably my most sophisticated friend.
5. tattersall — squares formed by crossed color lines over another, usually light, solid color; fabric in this pattern
He wore his habitual yellow tattersall waistcoat with its red and green lines beneath his green corduroy jacket with the leather elbow patches, and thought himself quite dashing.
6. impendent — impending, imminent
The whole house was suffused with an air of impendent disaster, though it was an open question whether the legal cataclysm would strike before the final collapse of the leaking water pipes.
7. quale — subjective perceptible quality considered as independent entity
I found it impossible to assemble the various qualia arriving fuzzily at my mind into any coherent picture of the real world objects associated with them, though whether this was due to my illness or to the very strong drugs they had given me, I cannot say.
8. misericord — room in monastery where some relaxation of monastic rules was permitted; small ledge on folding church seat providing support for people standing; small dagger or pike designed for making a killing ‘mercy’ stroke against a wounded enemy
Besides this effulgence of talented artistic depiction, it remains as well to investigate why so many of these intricate English misericord carvings depict sin and sinful acts.
9. palanquin — small boxlike litter for carrying a reclining passenger by several men holding poles attached to the conveyance
In Eastern Bengal at this time regulations were drawn up for the regulation of palanquins, generally following those already extant for hackney carriages.
10. yoctosecond — 10−24 seconds, one septillion of a second, one trillionth of a trillionth of a second
So far, scientists have little to say about the time during the Planck Epoch, a ten-trillionth of a yoctosecond in duration, or 10-43 seconds.
Bonus Vocabulary
(British slang)
camp as a row of tents — flamboyantly effeminate
Now Uncle Howard, he was camp as a row of tents, but we was all surprised when Reggie came out that summer and then ran off with that scrawny professor, the one with the torn ear and the daft glasses.