1. steppe-witch — any of the easily dislodged round plants of the Russian steppes which roll with the wind after dying off, tumbleweed
The children will tell you that a steppe-witch brings you luck, but this dried monster lodged beneath the staff car had brought us only ill fortune.
2. Pelmanism — memory training system using duplicate images which the trainee repeatedly reveals in order to recall location of the second duplicate image
Abigail searched the roll-top desk as if playing at some demented form of Pelmanism, opening first this drawer then that, closing the first and then the second, riffling through the inbox then the outbox, opening a third drawer then the first again, until finally fixating on the small drawer inset between the black and red inkwells.
3. buckra — [slang] white person
“So I’m supposed to stop everything to attend to any buckra who blesses my shop with his presence?”
4. clodpole — stupid fellow
We knew Mr. Evan’s new driver from school, a real clodpole who’d failed eighth grade so many times they finally let him have a diploma before the army called him up to serve in Korea.
5. whistlepig — woodchuck
Avery claimed that he had once dug a whistlepig out of his hole, and I believed that no more than this fresh nonsense he was purveying.
6. dispreader — [archaic] one who spreads or disseminates (something)
Brother Hawthorn was hailed as a great dispreader of the Holy Word, which was why it was all the more surprising that he’d been asked to leave Bayswater.
7. blandish — cajole, convince someone through flattery; butter up, sycophantically praise
With murmured approval of the barmaid’s eyes and, erm, other features, followed by seemingly offhand questions, Miles blandished the well-worn tankard tosser into telling us what we needed to know.
8. riancy — gaiety, joviality
Preston, however, heard this devastating news with aplomb, and, not wishing to cast a shadow over his daughter’s event, affected a marvelous air of riancy and bonhomie during the party until the last guests had departed for their carriages or bedrooms.
9. osetra (also ossetra) — caviar from the eponymous Russian sturgeon
I have always preferred the nuttiness of osetra, and I left the beluga to the others.
10. fulminatory — thundering, booming; censorious
But in the middle of his fulminatory peroration Higgins paused, as if struck by a sudden surprising thought, and backtracked once more to the image of the young boy left bereft of father and mother by the actions of the woman in the dock.
Bonus Vocabulary
(British & Anzac kid’s game)
French cricket — informal game using cricket bat (or any such stick) and soft ball (e.g., a tennis ball) with no wickets where batsman tries to fend off ball thrown at or between his legs
Uncle Harry managed to distract the cousins and their friend Lester by introducing them to the ‘sport’ of French cricket and soon had all five of them haring off into the woods and down to the lake in search of the ball which he pelted one-handed hither and yon all while holding a Foster’s in his other fist.