1. casern — garrison lodging, barracks
I tied my horse to one of the pillars holding up a sort of porch roof before the unimpressive casern of the Trebitsch regiment, for I saw no stables.
2. gangrel — [Scots] tramp, vagabond; gangling person
“Don’t try to cheer me with your gangrel wisdom, for I’ve known house and home and—aye—family too, a loving wife and two children who would weep to see their father reduced to this state.”
3. Glagolitic — now unused alphabet used for certain old Slavic languages
The words in the painting, however, were written in Glagolitic characters, and though I could puzzle out some of the letters which had similarity to the Cyrillic, I could make no guess at what sounds many of the strange curvy shapes might represent.
4. leaguer — siege; one who besieges
Preparations for the leaguer of Stuymesand continued apace, and everywhere I saw men felling the tall trees of the peninsula, shaping them into fell engines of war.
5. scalene — [mathematics] having sides of unequal length
The production of a six-sided scalene pyramid from the rhomboid is left as an exercise for the reader.
6. laund — glade, grassy pasture amidst woods
There among the saplings bordering the laund of sedge, they spied their quarry, the sly fox standing alert yet apparently unconcerned.
7. must — new wine, not yet fermented fruit juice
Only a few handfuls of must remained now at the bottom of the damaged vats.
8. semiosic — of or related to semiotics
Though we had been told very clearly to fix firmly the semiosic plane before moving on to the mimetic plane, Hodges was sick of the whole thing and punched a hole right through the physical plane of the painting.
9. furlong — 220 yards, 1/8 of a mile
And then the two great armies stopped still, with perhaps only a single furlong separating the vanguards of the mighty horsemen.
10. abaft — aft of, behind; towards the rear
Abaft the cargo hold was the single barrel of fresh water aboard, filled with slimy grossnesses of which it was best not to think as you swallowed.