1. septimanal — weekly; of or related to periods of seven days
Truly you’ll find it no more difficult to write for the daily papers than for those septimanal sheets you work for now.
2. blinkard — [obsolete] person with poor vision; idjut
Perhaps I’ve been such a blinkard as to overlook their nascent romance, but I can hardly fail to take action now that cognizance of the situation has been forced upon me.
3. epos — epic
The eldest Indian eposes are found in the Vedic texts which may be reliably dated to at least 1500 BCE, though much within them is almost certainly even much older than that.
4. thentofore — [obsolete] until that time; before then
The family had had no settled address thentofore, but were never to move from this new mansion until the tragic events which followed the scandal of the missing pastries over a century later.
5. besprent — [archaic] besprinkled
Just as in the poem the nursery floor was besprent with blood, and nowhere could the babe be found.
6. nun buoy — [nautical] cone-shaped buoy (in fact, usu. a double cone with only the top cone visible)
We found her green rope sweater atop a nun buoy at the harbor entrance, but that was the only sign we had of Heather for the next three years.
7. terraqueous — made up of land and water
All ’round the terraqueous globe the very air seemed hushed in anticipation.
8. factotum — doer of all sorts of work, general handyman, odd-job worker
Somehow I’d evolved from being just a paying tenant to being her all-around factotum and jack of all trades, starting with ‘just a little’ gardening on the weekends, until now I had hardly any time of my own anymore.
9. hirundine — swallow or martin
I sighed in pleasure, listening to the songs of the hirundines as they darted through the trees teasing each other in joyful ecstasy of flight.
10. condole — to express sympathy
We cannot help but condole with you during this trying hour of loss, and pray you to remember that we stand ready to provide any assistance we can.
Bonus Vocabulary
(British historical)
potwaller — householder (person entitled to vote in borough elections by virtue of sufficient income to “keep their pot [of water] boiling”)
The fifty-three ‘open boroughs’ of the time may be reasonably divided into those where so-called ‘potwallers‘ had the franchise and the ‘scot-and-lot’ boroughs where the right to vote belonged to all who paid in full the local imposts.