1. doryphore — persistent pest, obstinately pedantic critic
And of course Reinhard, the office doryphore, noticed that we’d had to change the printer paper, and that the later pages of the report used 92 brightness paper instead of the 96 bright at the beginning.
2. aoudad — Barbary sheep
The hills around Hearst Castle still contain some of the animals the newspaper magnate once housed in his private zoo, including zebras amongst the cattle and the horned aoudads which visitors may see as they ascend to the immense home.
3. slut’s wool — [idiom] dust and debris that gathers beneath furniture (in supposed reference to slatternly housekeeping habits)
Looking for the missing contact lens with my flashlight at ground level among the slut’s wool beneath the old armchair in the corner, I realized that even if we found the dropped ophthalmic aid, Shelley would never want to stick it back in her eye, covered as it would be with detritus and dust from the previous millennium.
4. pisstake — [UK or Australian slang] parody, pastiche
It really weren’t much of a holiday special, more like a cobbled together pisstake of A Christmas Carol that gave pride of place to our primary sponsor that year, Bevin’s Buttered Hams.
5. burrnesha — [Albanian] Balkan sworn virgins, women in parts of western Balkan regions who take an oath of celibacy and gain privileges otherwise available only to men
There never were very many burrnesha in these mountains even at the time of the first reports of the practice, from 19th Century travelers, and today there may be only as few as a dozen ‘sworn virgins’ left living.
6. roman-fleuve — long involved novel about lives of intricately connected people; sequence of related novels detailing (for example) lives of a single family across generations; very lengthy and wordy text
And if this biography or memoir or whatever it pretends to be is actually the masterful roman-fleuve its proponents (among them Professor Halders) claim it to be, then this antepenultimate episode in this interminable work is its cloaca, the foul sewer into which this sluggish river of logorrhea finally descends.
7. Transoxania — region beyond the Oxus River, northeast of the historical Persian province of Khorasan
His commitment to the arts was well known, and the distinctive style of Timurid miniature painting is still one of the glories of Transoxania.
8. ecru — very light beige, color of unbleached linen; dark greyish yellow
On the train north to the summer retreat, Liesl was so proud of her ecru veil that she refused to remove it even when biscuits were bought from the treats cart.
9. holus bolus — all together, all at once, entirely
The urchin tried to eat all the food on his plate holus bolus and I had to gently remind him that he had loads of time to eat, and that all the food was his and his alone.
10. dramaturge — adviser to theater company about repertoire and public relations
Strangely enough, even though the director and the entire company knew that “Ms.” Patton was far too old to play Juliet, it was only Travers, our poor put-upon dramaturge, who dared to speak the unspeakable directly to her face.
Bonus Vocabulary
(UK informal)
bog standard — just ordinary (with derogatory connotation)
He showed up in that bog standard Fiesta of his wearing the same clothes she’d seen him in earlier that day at work, and he’s wondering now why she doesn’t return his calls?