1. cruentate — [obsolete] blood-smeared
But it was not in that fetid fly-filled room with its cruentate walls of horror that the worst nightmare was to be found, but inside the antiseptically clean closet at the back, within the tiny floor safe set into the dark linoleum.
2. nocent — noxious, harmful; not innocent
And so the better to pursue his nocent purposes he covered his garb with a dark leathern cloak and put on a wide-brimmed hat.
3. in posse — [Latin] potentially (as contrasted with actually)
Though this edict was bemoaned as, in posse, severely restricting the investment opportunities and freedoms of the richer classes, in practice the law was applied only to the most wretched of individuals.
4. abgeschmackt — [German] tasteless, vulgar
Such fervent melodrama now seems merely abgeschmackt burlesque to we moderns, like the guignol theater of fin-de-siècle Paris, though in its time it moved apparently both the most tender hearts and the most jaded spirits with its poignant tales of missed opportunities and derring-do.
5. fetlock — joint on horses between the hoof and the knee or hock; fur tuft growing at this joint
Garrick rode his horse sweating into the river up to its fetlocks, letting her drink the water so that I feared he might founder her.
6. acidulate — to make sour; to acidify
The flight of her lover made Grantha less demure and more forward, acidulating her tongue so that her sardonic wit became famous all along the Old West Road.
7. circular insanity — [obsolete] outdated term for manic-depressive disorder
The discoverer of what was then called ‘circular insanity‘ had to endure accusations of plagiarism until his death in 1870, though the record clearly shows the priority of his claim.
8. ferrididdle — [Southern] chipmunk, red ground squirrel
A ferrididdle had entered the tent through the poorly secured flap and was quite contentedly munching away at the peanuts Farrow had secreted in his backpack.
9. areology — study of the planet Mars
At the time these results were believed to be the biggest advance in areology since Lowell’s confirmation of the martian canals detected by Schiaparelli.
10. snib — [Scots or Australian] to latch
Jerry snibbed the screen door even though it was so warped that it hardly could keep out small rodents, let alone the insects that already plagued the rude cabin.
Bonus Vocabulary
(slang)
brunser — male homosexual, esp. younger partner of a pair
There was some talk that he was Bobby’s brunser, but not a lot to his face after he knifed Freddy in the gut.