1. davit — [nautical] small crane used on a boat, esp. in pairs for lowering and raising a lifeboat or launch
Sudden panic overcame me as I came out of the gangway and saw the lines blowing free in the gale and the davits emptied of the only seaworthy lifeboat on the ship.
2. grimdark — bleak, dark, violent, dystopian genre fiction, esp. fantasy
Even in her latest grimdark novel, Jolene cannot resist throwing in a taste of her life-affirming crystal-waving ‘We Are All One’ quasi-Buddhist quasi-Taoist beliefs she apparently acquired from her hippie mother.
3. diener (also deaner) — orderly in morgue charged with cleaning and moving corpses
I noticed we were working without a diener tonight, and when I asked him where Sparks (our usual assistant) was, Hadley grunted that the fewer eyes the better on this particular case.
4. pessary — vaginal suppository; prothesis inserted in vagina for therapeutic purposes
The procedure is even enjoined by the original version of the Hippocratic Oath, where doctors swear never to insert a pessary to induce abortion.
5. mackerel (often plural) — suggestive of fish scales
It was a beautiful mackerel sky, though the rich pink color of the sunset made me think more of salmon.
6. blowzy (also blowsy) — ruddy, rude, and dirty
She was a blowzy old wench who had no place in this refined coffee house, but she insisted upon a doctor, at once, so—to avoid further derangement to the convivial company—I agreed to accompany her to see what promised to be a nonpaying patient.
7. sassenach (often capitalized) — [Scots] English person
Duncan dismissed Hardy as just another sassenach fool come to see the credulous men in kilts who still believed in monsters and fairies.
8. hippopotamoid — animal similar to a hippopotamus; animal in the family of Hippopotamidae
Buried in the mud we thought we had rousted a hippopotamoid, but it turned out to be a buried clothes chest.
9. wrappers — outer cover of paper-covered book
Some foxing may be seen on the inside of the wrappers, but the exterior is unmarked and the cover illustration is still bright in the original colors.
10. fanlight — [architecture] small semicircular window over a door or larger window, often decorated so as to resemble a fan
The metal framework of what had once been a gorgeous Victorian fanlight could be seen in the debris, all that remained to suggest what a wonderful house this pile of rubble had once been.
Bonus Vocabulary
(UK informal)
panda car — police car, from original black-and-white coloring
At half past nine the first panda car arrived on the scene and less than three minutes later the patrolman called for an ambulance and a team from CID.