1. mayhap — [archaic] perhaps, possibly
Mayhap you’ll find your keys immediately after I hang up the phone, but mayhap you’ll not, so I might as well come over to give you a ride should you need one.
2. smarm — to smooth down with ointment or grease; to fawn over
Babbidge’s hair was smarmed down to his collar, which of course was grease-stained by the rancid stuff.
3. soigné — well-groomed, fashionably made up
She was a grand old dame, and though her dresses were thirty years out of date she was perfectly soignée at any hour of the day and I daresay that even had a fire necessitated her running into the street at three in the morning, she would have appeared as perfectly made up as if she’d just finished two hours at her vanity.
4. twit — to censure, to tease
Margery twitted him for having missed her birthday—again—and he took her reproach in the spirit it was intended, asking if there were an ancient emerald in some distant land that he could bring back to her as amends … preferably one with a curse.
5. yett — [Scots] gate
Arthur rode through the grand yett for the first time, his chest swelling as he thought what a pretty sight he must make upon his chestnut charger.
6. decussate — to cross at right angles, to intersect
So they decided to decussate their crops so each could claim the bounty to father, Petey plowing north to south and Jackson planting his on an east-west axis.
7. clement — temperate, mild; merciful
When sober Papa was the most clement of men, and would forgive even a dire injury, but in his cups, he transformed into a veritable monster, and would find faults where none were intended.
8. cenobite — monk
But the desert fathers took this quietistic Christianity much farther than had the cenobites who sought solace in the forbidding wastes of this parched land.
9. casemate — bombproof shelter for troops or for artillery
Best practice is to build concrete casemates at the same time the parapets are constructed, though of course sandbags or earthworks may be used in the field.
10. ning-nong (also ning nong) — [Australian slang] idiot, dunderhead
“Oh, I’ll admit he’s fancy enough with that row of medals on his chest, and his title’ll impress the folk that go for that sort of thing, but don’t let him say more than two words together or they’ll see right away that he’s a total ning-nong!”
Bonus Vocabulary
(from obscure meaning of ‘cast‘ as a persistent turn, ultimately from the Middle English casten meaning ‘to overturn’)
a cast in one’s eye — the condition of having one eye twisted permanently to one side, the state of being cockeyed
Kathleen has a slight cast in her left eye which is not, however, unattractive in the least.