1. perissodactyl — ungulate with an odd number of toes, such as equids, tapirs, and rhinos
I slunk back into the bushes and retreated across the wash to avoid the perissodactyl and allowed a wide margin before returning to the path, hoping I’d left the rhino far behind.
2. quadragesimal — of or related to Lent; of or related to a forty day period
I was in the second week of my quadragesimal fast from cheese when I noticed the odd discoloration upon my neck.
3. menstruum — [obsolete] menstrual discharge; solvent
If the menstruum has not enough alcohol its efficacy may be less and it may in fact not be strong enough to extract the alkaloids desired.
4. skive — [UK informal] to blow off, to shirk
Bonager was a real prig, and had never skived a single day at uni, and suddenly he was showing up late or not at all to the office, and then Skelton said he saw him in Soho in a flash car with a trull half his age.
5. skivvy — scullion; tight-fitting long-sleeve T-shirt
I looked at the kitchen skivvy again, and though she’d always seemed an absolute dunce before, now that I knew that she was actually a journalist I pretended to myself that I could detect the hidden signs of a feral intelligence I had heretofore overlooked.
6. skivvies — men’s underpants
We stood there in the pouring rain dressed only in our skivvies being screamed at by that Louisiana yokel and I wondered once again what fatal flaw in my character had ever allowed me to think this was a good idea.
7. lovelock — long lock of hair, often braided, left apart from bulk of hair to lie over the heart, fashionable in 16th & 17th Centuries
Of course the wild popularity of lovelocks engendered the usual moral panic on the part of the church, especially as it was presumed to originate with hairstyles of the savage Indians of the New World.
8. shail — to shuffle, to walk in an irregular stumbling manner; to drag the feet while walking
Though fashionably dressed, the seeming gentleman was shailing in the street like the worst drunken reprobate.
9. stringhalt — sudden equine lameness in rear legs of various causes
Fortunately the tenectomy completely resolved the residual stringhalt remaining after the new diet had alleviated most of the symptoms observed in the gelding.
10. postdictable — of or related to counterintuitive thing which makes sense after seen or experienced
Thus this new economics holds that the postdictable analysis of the Great Depression is merely a rebranding of the same nonsense which is operative in these rarified circles of financial religion before every great money crisis.
Bonus Vocabulary
(UK slang, orig. WWII)
go for a burton — to die; to be ruined or lost
I gave him my word and a year later I learned he’d gone for a burton and I asked for leave and packed my bags to take the train up to Scotland to see what could be done for my godson.