1. jingo — bellicose patriot
Appalled at Lord Muley’s quick insistence on massive reductions in the fleet, Sir Richard showed why he was considered the foremost jingo in the opposition with a long and loud speech of both hawkish and mawkish protest.
2. rondure — supple roundness; orb, sphere
As they swung through the canted bars of the nested Dymaxion domes, Harry found himself admiring Ellie’s splendid rondure perhaps more than was strictly necessary.
3. lemniscus — bundle of white nerve fibers in brainstem
Though Von Monakow’s explanation of the causative factors are not altogether satisfactory, his study of the consequences of lesions upon the lemniscus is nonetheless quite authoritative.
4. kleptocracy — rule by thieves
And thus was a once mighty republic torn asunder, turned into an insensate kleptocracy whose barbarous rulers were goverened only by their basest desires for gold and power and other, darker, lusts.
5. pibroch — funereal or martial bagpipe music
Long they heard the wailin’, the hesitating skirling, of Donny on the cliffs, trying over and over to master the pibroch his uncle had written for his pipes.
6. waffy — [British idiom] silly; faint; sickly, nauseating
But I come over all waffy and had to set down a spell, and have a bit of water.
7. zonulet — [archaic] little zone
I, too, was fascinated by that zonulet of love Herrick spoke of.
8. dioecious — [biology] having male and female sex organs in separate individuals (esp. of plants)
As even the most novice doper knows, marijuana plants are dioecious, and identification of the sexes is an important skill for a grower to have.
9. petrary — generic term for stone-heaving instruments of war
And now the order was given for all our petrary to be unleashed, and I loosed the mangonel with satisfaction, happy to see my small stones added to the huge boulders of the catapults and trebuchets.
10. farl — [Scots] flatbread or cake, typically cut in quadrants
He shared with me half a farl and I thanked him heartily, though the sodabread was hard chewing with no water or other drink.
Bonus Vocabulary
(British idiom)
on one’s uppers — very poor, destitute [from idea of poverty so acute that one’s shoes have worn away all the leather, so that only the upper portion remains]
But mostly he was just lazy, only searching for work when he was really and truly on his uppers.