1. soubise — onion sauce For this delicate filet an equally delicate soubise is the perfect accompaniment, the sauce also serving to highlight the flavor of the fresh leeks. 2. prescind — to cut off; to separate in thought, to consider apart But as Peirce points out, one cannot prescind color from space or …
Tag Archives: bonus word
Friday Vocabulary
1. madding — frenzied, acting like a madman; tending to drive (one) insane You seem to still have the illusion that this madding bureaucracy is a mistake, a misapplication of higher ideals and the tenets of a purer political science—when of course the very arbitrariness and nonsensical practice you bemoan is the very core, the …
Friday Vocabulary
1. enfeoff — to give a fiefdom Due to the political realities, King Jane had enfeoffed the duke with his old holdings under the previous dynasty, but the new king did not—of course—entirely trust his vassal. 2. chuffed — [British informal] delighted “And on top of that, I finally found my reading glasses, so …
Friday Vocabulary
1. oolite — spherical sedimentary rock formed in concentric layers The walls of the keep have fallen almost in ruins, and are made from oolite from the Northland deposits some twenty miles away. 2. stumer — [British slang] fraud; bad check; failure After Wally’s remarks before, I expected that Russell’s check would turn out …
Friday Vocabulary
1. purse-seine — fishing net (usu. deployed by two boats) in shape of an enormous bag closed at the bottom by a line (the purse-line) The first recorded purse-seine was used in 1826 to catch a staggering school of menhaden which was almost too huge for the fishermen to handle. 2. dunch — [golf] …
Friday Vocabulary
1. haggard — appearing worn, exhausted, gaunt, esp. as result of privation or anxiety; wild-looking Even in the better light of the foyer, I could hardly believe that the haggard and desperate wretch before me was my former lab partner from school, the ruddy-cheeked fair-haired boy who scoffed at peril and laughed at adversity. …
Friday Vocabulary
1. fjeld — elevated plateau barren of all except rocks To cross the fjeld is only a matter of traversing the hundred miles of wasteland to attain the sources of the Bergen Fjord, but the mere distance rather understates the difficulty of the journey, with only mute rocks for company, and the dreadful sameness of …
Friday Vocabulary
1. bucranium — [architecture] sculpted ox skull used as decoration Though we can trace the bucrania found at Monticello and the University of Virginia to a frieze depicted in Les Édifices Antiques de Rome by Desgodetz, the decorative use of such skulls and horns has been dated back at least as far as the neolithic …
Friday Vocabulary
1. econophysics — unorthodox use of mathematical models from physics to analyze economics In spite of a strong debate about the fertility and benefits of econophysics, it mostly seems another example of economists at the highest levels using overly complicated mathematics to explain either the inexplicable or why they got the last explanation wrong. …
Friday Vocabulary
1. excogitate — to think over, to plan, to scheme As the garbage truck pulled into the alley, blocking his exit, Benny reflected how the brilliant plan the boss had excogitated kept running aground when trying to navigate the turbulent river of reality. 2. shelve — to slope gradually We made anchor in a …