Friday Vocabulary

1. pasquinade — lampoon, satire

The plywood boards over the old store windows were covered with rude (and crude) pasquinades of The Leader’s dalliance with the Princess of Earl, which some soul had tried to counter rudely (and crudely) by smearing the word ‘NO!’ over the broadsheets in black house paint.

 

2. circumjacent — surrounding, in the area around

The combine had acquired ownership or control over all the circumjacent land, and only this disgusting pig farm stood in the way of their plans for a new real estate park.

 

3. incomer — person moving into a tight-knit community from outside that group or location

Somehow this incomer to the insular ambient punk scene in Maryland has managed to forge deep bonds rather quickly with some of the godfathers and doyennes of this peculiar subculture.

 

4. preceptor — teacher

Of such fortuity are fortunes made, and it was rare chance indeed that allowed our dear Jane to have had both the Junkyard Boss Man and Senator Ellsworth as childhood preceptors.

 

5. cautelous — cautious; treacherous and artful, insidious

By such cautelous wiles had Sir Robert inveigled the lady to place the gem among the jewelry of the duchess.

 

6. epidiascope — projector capable of casting images of both transparent and opaque objects

Bethany had acquired an old epidiascope that had once formed part of a traveling lecture act, hoping it would help her drawing studies.

 

7. guipure — heavy plaited or barred lace

She was working on a truly remarkable guipure d’art which seemed to represent some fantastic flowering plant, though nothing of the sort was ever seen by any botanist outside of an opium den.

 

8. astride — with legs on either side

Josie rode astride in Jodhpurs just as the menfolk, and I confess a moment of disappointment for this evidence (as I thought then) of failed femininity.

 

9. battue — hunting by driving game towards hunters by beaters

Mr. Kinsley seemed to be having no little trouble with the chase, so I resolved upon a battue for the morrow, as I wanted the city lawyer in a good mood before I broached my proposal.

 

10. missioner — missionary

With such a large number of villages to care for, one missioner can hardly be expected to do the same work of moral regeneration as your thrice-blessed parson.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(UK idiom, from going up wooden stairs to bed)

climb the wooden hill to Bedfordshire (also up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire) — to go to bed, to sleep

He had been shot at four times, stabbed once, had forded a freezing stream carrying that piglet upon his shoulders, broken into two houses and that blasted post office, and all Harry wanted to do was climb the wooden hill to Bedfordshire, but he knew he couldn’t do that until he’d taken care of this crusty pensioner, one way or another.

 

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