1. muzzy — blurry, fuzzy, unfocused; confused, dazed; drunk, mentally impaired due to alcohol
Fernando shook his head—which was a mistake—to try to focus on what Jess was saying, and finally got it through his muzzy head that his roommate was shouting something about the apartment being on fire.
2. mouchard — [French] nark, police spy
Evard didn’t go to prison, however, and all the quiet dark men in the bars mused that he had become Captain Ranoch’s latest mouchard.
3. prepossession — opinion, bias, prejudice (esp. in a favorable sense)
These nervous tics made it impossible for his superiors to form that prepossession without which advancement in the bureau was almost impossible, especially to one who had graduated from Alabama.
4. teetotum — small finger-spun top, such as a dreidel
Like a wobbling teetotum the young toddler finally collapsed after all his spinning about, though I was unable to read the character inscribed upon his panting, smiling visage.
5. rampallian — vulgar person, wretch
“So you’ve taken your place among the tavern rampallians and have found your true level at last.”
6. star-crossed — ill fated, doomed by the stars
Thorne was to play a crucial role at the end of this sad farce, but the star-crossed clerk would find that his vigorous actions were as detrimental to his high hopes as had been his quiescent hesitations of the previous weeks.
7. legendry — legends in a collective sense, mythologies
Of the common tales told throughout these diverse peoples from the Kazakh plains to the Mountains of the Moon, no figure of legendry seems to suffer quite so sad a fate as does the Frog Boy, along with his partner in crime (in most versions), the Moping Mouse.
8. depreciate — to lose value; to belittle
However, inflation had depreciated the value of these fixed returns, and Jeremiah found himself having to expend his principal.
9. deprecate — to express disapproval of; to belittle; to cease support for
“I don’t mean to deprecate Tomas in your eyes, Emily, but it seems that the new version is even worse than the one who was sent off to prison.”
10. attar — essential oil made from flowers, esp. from roses
Just as three thousand flowers are needful to make one small vial of attar, so have I distilled the blessed memories of a wonderful life into these few pages.
Bonus Vocabulary
(Scots)
dowp (also doup) — buttocks; butt end of a cigarette
Aye, he made a fine figure of a man now, poking through the rubbish with his fingers, searching for a dowp or two so he could have a smoke, him who’d once bought his Cuban cigars by the box.