Friday Vocabulary

1. infandous — of that which should not be told; odious in the extreme, horrid

I shuddered and steeled myself once more to descend those irregular stairs and enter the wretched basement where Jeremiah had spent the last days of his tortured life, to gaze once more upon the infandous figures in the charcoal drawings covering the damp walls, wherein he had essayed to depict the demons that haunted his dreams and perhaps, at the end, even his waking hours.

 

2. ophidian — of or related to snakes

Carson kept his legs beneath the blankets and wrenched his body around with an almost ophidian writhing turn as he wrenched himself to look at me and the doctor.

 

3. objective tinnitus — noise heard within the ear which can also be heard by another (usually through an instrument such as a stethoscope)

Though most would assume that objective tinnitus is simply a much louder form of the annoying ringing in the ears which plagues so many, in fact it is usually caused by the sound of blood rushing through vessels near the ear canal, and presents itself to both the sufferer and the observer as a rushing or ‘whooshing’ sound.

 

4. chifforobe — furniture piece with both drawers and a rod for hanging clothes

The old chifforobe‘s front doors had never completely closed, because the socket at the bottom was somehow offset from true center.

 

5. punter — [slang] person, esp. a customer; prostitute’s client; bettor

Padraic insisted that the peanut bowls always be filled to the brim, to keep the punters happy, as he always added.

 

6. jehu — [colloquial] fast driver, often furiously so; cabman

Our jehu proved equal to the task, and within a rather hair-raising fifteen minutes we found ourselves at Paddington Station.

 

7. foehn — dry warm wind blowing downhill in the Alps, esp. in Switzerland

Happy to feel both the foehn and the sun on his face, Hans walked briskly up the path to tend to his father’s cows.

 

8. wimple — medieval head covering for women formed from cloth over the head draped around the neck

Much of religious garb has its roots in the Middle Ages, such as the wimple still worn by most nuns, once a sign of higher class status among medieval women.

 

9. dithyrambic — extremely excited or emotional, frenzied, impassioned

Usually the most staid and perhaps boring of orators, St. Jean reached dithyrambic heights of impassioned speechifying as he reached the end of his peroration, pleading with all and sundry to fully support the new bypass.

 

10. mestizo — mixed race person, esp. a Latin American or Filipino with both native and European ancestry

Before the war, most Spaniards looked down upon the mestizos, even the very wealthy merchants with fine homes in Manila.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(British slang)

banjo — to beat, to knock down, to thrash

The three miscreants caught their former teacher in the stadium stairwell and banjoed him mercilessly.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. loosestrife — common name of flowering plants of two distinct genera: Lythrum and Lysimachia

So many flowers fall under the general rubric of the loosestrifes that it is often unclear which is meant, as—for example—the scarlet pimpernel from which the famous hero took his name, which is one of over two hundred plants bearing the name loosestrife.

 

2. pyretic — related to, causing or caused by fever

But this sort of pyretic philosophy has always been popular among college freshmen (emphasis on men) and latecomers to deep thought who believe they are the first to explore ideas about the nature of things.

 

3. postulate — axiom; supposedly obvious assumption used as basis for argument

Of course, one can see Euclid’s Fifth Postulate as a bellwether for the vast changes that were to occupy turn-of-the-century mathematics, with Non-Euclidean Geometries only one of the first domains now captured by Functional Analysis.

 

4. risaldar (also rissalder, ressaldar) — Indian calvary rank of a native commander of a horse regiment

The mustachioed risaldar looked doubtful, but as I held the Queen’s commission, he held his tongue.

 

5. circumquaque — roundabout speech or writing

He provided as apology before the actual work his own circumquaque pretending to take offense at the author’s ideas that he was publishing, thus hoping to deflect the inevitable attacks and censorship which, indeed, followed immediately after he distributed the tendentious pamphlet.

 

6. warrener — professional keeper or hunter of rabbits

No man besides the warrener saw the passage of the horsemen, and he saw them only darkly in the distance as he guarded his pens from foxes that moonless night.

 

7. manticore — legendary beast with human face on the body of a lion and the tail of a scorpion or dragon

“Do not be fooled by his very human, very charming bearded face, my young apprentice, for the manticore has an insatiable hunger for flesh, for human flesh, and it is not a cannibal appetite but rather the monstrous bestiality of this vile creature that drives him, in spite of his honeyed words.”

 

8. clapper bridge — old style of bridge in which large stone slabs are laid across a creek or river, usually on stone piers

The violence of the river in spate had pushed off one of the schist slabs from the clapper bridge leading to the abbey, so the oxcarts had to take a long detour to the ford further down by Withinex.

 

9. compere — [British] master of ceremonies

When I was chosen as compere of my retiring boss’s roast, I had no idea how many drunken idiots I would have to ride herd on that long, long night.

 

10. gaiter — lower leg covering worn over boot; covering for ankle and instep

Presby wrote an entire monograph upon the uselessness of gaiters as military footwear, unfortunately not realizing that the Colonel’s brother-in-law was supplying the same for the entire Army of the West.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(British military food slang, WWI era)

Zepp — sausage

We ate well, two Zepps in a cloud, that is, two sausages on a ‘cloud’ of mashed potatoes.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. toerag (also toe-rag) — [British colloquial] worthless or despicable person; vagrant

But I’m not about to be made to feel guilty by some toerag whose problems are all his own.

 

2. noddle — [British] the head

This job’s not a very good use of your fine old noddle, now is it?

 

3. reredorter — privy in medieval monastery

I made my way through the steady rain to the reredorter, where it seemed all of the brethren had gathered, perhaps upset in the same way I had been by the cook’s daunting stew.

 

4. pomo — [slang] postmodern

And then Fincham-Smythe came out with some pomo Marxist twaddle that I thought we’d all said good riddance to when the new millennium arrived.

 

5. sucket fork — eating utensil with spoon bowl on one end of the stem and two- or three-tined fork on the other, used for eating sweetmeats

It seems strange that the fork was the last of our three primary pieces of silverware to come into common use, with only specialized versions before our modern era—such as the sucket fork beloved by the Tudors—but earlier eaters were quite content to use their fingers for most of the purposes we put our forks to.

 

6. malapert — impudent, overly saucy

I’ll take no such words from a malapert serving wench who no better knows her place than to take such umbrage at the master’s will.

 

7. sobriquet — nickname

His sobriquet, “the Petty”, derived from the possibly apocryphal account of the would-be king’s dunning of his tax collectors with questions about every divergence from projected revenues, to the point where his finance minister, the Bishop Polprêtre, resigned (or rather, attempted to resign) in pretended disgust.

 

8. criminator — [archaic] accuser, calumniator

Thus did my own feelings become criminators against my own spouse, so troubled had I been by the knowing looks and diffident words of my fellows.

 

9. veronica — bullfighting pass in which matador swings his muleta before the bull while keeping his legs perfectly still

With a passable veronica I grabbed the boy off his bike just as it passed in its pell-mell descent and held him safely as his vehicle flew into and over the railing just on the other side of the roadway, to fall in an agony of metal and rubber onto the rocks below.

 

10. groat — very old English coin of silver, worth four pennies

Though the groat was taken from circulation in the 17th Century, it is still minted as one of the Maundy coins.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(derogatory military slang)

Rupert — junior officer

He had the serene self-confidence and total lack of situational awareness that epitomized most of the Sandhurst Ruperts I had contact with during that sweltering summer campaign.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. erudite — having or showing lots of knowledge or learning

But this sort of erudite reasoning is hardly to the point when we’re merely trying to decide where to build the outhouse.

 

2. gleeman — wandering singer (in medieval era)

But the roles were not always thought of as separate in those times, and the term ‘juggler’ (or ‘jongleur‘) might be used of dancers, actors, acrobats, or gleemen.

 

3. skewiff (also skewwhiff or skew-whiff) — [Australian colloquial] askew, awry, out of line

You could tell Andy had started drinking earlier than usual that day, as his furrows became a bit skewiff at the back of the field.

 

4. aubade — song or poem in honor of the dawn

His plans to serenade (of course, that is the wrong word) his sweetheart with a lovely aubade at daybreak were devastated when he saw by the new-breaking sun’s light his rival descending furtively from her window.

 

5. scamp — to perform in a slipshod or careless way

And that trivial incident was the beginning of the end of his usefulness to the firm, as from that day on Pauley seemed to discard all his previously held habits of industriousness and high business ethics, becoming tardy and often absent altogether, taking ever longer breaks, scamping his work whenever he could.

 

6. rear-vassal — vassal of a vassal, feudal tenant of one who held his own fief from a greater lord or the king

But these gains only applied to the great dukes and barons, and neither the villeins nor the rear-vassals can have noticed much if any difference in their daily lives.

 

7. dissipate — to disperse; to squander, to waste; to lose energy through conversion to heat

By this point, however, the young lord had dissipated his inheritance by his wastrel lifestyle, and most of the lands in question were already under lien or had been sold outright to his many creditors.

 

8. scone — [Australian slang] to hit on the head

“Well, it’s not like I expected to be sconed by my son’s English teacher, is it?”

 

9. Weltschmerz — world-weariness, sorrowful depression over the state of the world and one’s portion in life

Then, like many a young lad before him, he cast aside the memories of his unhappy love affair, returned from his voyage to resume his duties at the bank, renounced his affected attitude of Weltschmerz, and gave up his naïve ideas of becoming a poet and got on with his life.

 

10. lintel — horizontal beam across the top of a door or window

There above the lintel we saw the same red teardrop of wood that we’d seen in several other houses in this benighted village.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(Australian slang)

dob — to inform on someone, to tell authorities of another’s wrongdoing; to be selected for an unwanted job

Everyone knew Alice had dobbed him in to the school because Cliff wouldn’t give her drugs anymore.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. usufruct — right to benefit and profit from a property without actual ownership nor the right to destroy, diminish, or alienate said property

Though initially the usufruct of the lands granted to the vassal reverted to the lord upon the former’s death, within a short span of years the fief became hereditary.

 

2. banal — unoriginal or common in a boring fashion

Though each freshman philosophy student brings forth his or her ‘insights’ as if these thoughts were the most original in the world, to the poor professor (or more likely an adjunct), each fall brings the same banal and foggy notions that she will grind her teeth to hear once more.

 

3. secular — worldly, as opposed to spiritual; of or related to laypeople or civil law, as opposed to clerical or religious; of clergy not belonging to a monastic order

It is all very well and good to claim that one shall leave the secular world, that one shall devote life and energy only to the higher things, to the spiritual plane upon which God’s truth must be found, but human flesh must have sustenance, and human emotions can only be throttled or channeled but not completely denied.

 

4. pourboire — tip

After the war, though most waiters were satisfied by whatever small change was left after you paid the bill, I never met a taxi driver who would not become indignant if you forgot his pourboire on top of the fare.

 

5. agnomen — fourth name given to some Roman citizens in addition to the praenomen, nomen, cognomen; nickname

The terrifying agnomen by which Caligula is known to history was of course originally only a laughing reference to the little boots he wore as a pretend soldier when he came as a small child with his father Germanicus to the front.

 

6. timeserver — person putting in minimal effort at work, due to burnout or closeness to retirement age; one who conforms to the opinions of those in power

Like most timeservers, Jacoby complained mightily when he was passed over for promotion, though he had of course never done more than the bare minimum in his job before.

 

7. gomeril (also gomeral, gomerel) — [Scots] fool

This sort of thing might dupe that whole tent full of gomerils down on the green, but I’m not taken in one bit.

 

8. catadromous — of animals which migrate from freshwater to the sea in order to spawn

For years it was believed that eels were the only catadromous fish, but a very few catadromous herring and anchovy species have been discovered.

 

9. mollify — to appease, to pacify; to reduce a burden; to soften

But promises and pledges could not mollify the angry crowd, and the government official began scanning the room for the most likely exit.

 

10. livid — furious; dark gray-blue

Mr. Portzweebie had become quite upset as the new conditions of his lease were explained to him, finally becoming so livid that he could no longer even speak, at which point the landlord decided the best option was to hurriedly take his leave.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. transpontine — of or related to (something on) the farther side of a bridge; of or related to the area south of the Thames river in London; of or related to sensational plays of the 19th Century presented in the area south of the River Thames

“I will not have your so-called ‘friends’ bringing their penchant for melodrama and their transpontine attitudes into my house,” said the stout publican and quondam theater critic.

 

2. cispontine — of or related to this side of a bridge

We could make out chevaux de frise and barbed wire before the barricades and guardhouse at the cispontine abutment, but the difficulties of the farther side were hidden by the impenetrable fog.

 

3. ratiocinate — to reason logically

Quimby seemed rather a dullard at most times, placid and affable and seemingly without a thought in his head, so when he was forced to ratiocinate upon any particularly challenging problem, sweat broke out upon his brow and one could almost imagine that the very veins at his temples began to throb with the effort to supply blood to the brain, that henceforth unused organ.

 

4. diehard — a person obstinately resistant to change; someone holding to a tenet with no single inclination to question that belief; person devoted entirely to a lost cause

There were, of course, a large number of diehards in favor of the Latin Mass, even after Vatican II.

 

5. vershok — old Russian unit of measurement equal to 1-3/4 inches, or 4.445 cm

He was very tall, even after he removed his papakha, standing at least 2 arshins and 11 vershoks high.

 

6. arshin — measurement of about 28 inches used in Imperial Russia and up to 1925

Arkady stood less than 2 arshins tall, and he had the pugnacious attitude of many very short men.

 

7. volute — having a spiral shape

The dog worried at the blanket and finally pulled it into the proper volute form upon which to rest her head.

 

8. demotic — of or related to common people; of or related to common language, vernacular; of or related to the simplified form of Egyptian cursive writing originating about the 7th Century BCE

But the wide spread of radio and finally television purged regional speech of its demotic vigor, replacing heretofore strong idioms with the pallid speech of news anchors and product demonstrators.

 

9. cleat — knob or device (often metal) used to secure lines on a nautical vessel; protrusion on shoes etc. to provide extra traction; strip secured across something to provide stability or strength

“Just cut the line! The cleat‘s about to go!”

 

10. constituent — part or piece of a whole; person represented by an elected official

Once we analyzed the stew we found one constituent entirely out of place: conium, or poison hemlock.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(old slang)

pi-jaw — sermonizing or patronizing talk, esp. of an adult to a child

Not since I was an undergrad have I had to sit still for such a load of pi-jaw as I was forced to suffer through that afternoon, as we all sat stupidly around the table and listened to J.B. rattle off his theories of what was wrong with the world and why.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. grutch — to complain

“If you must grutch and moan,” said the hospitaler, “have the sense to do it away from the sickroom windows.”

 

2. voile — diaphanous cotton fabric

If you decide to use voile for the side panels, be sure that the fabric is fully mercerized.

 

3. haylage — silage made from partly wet grass

We used the smaller opening for processing the haylage from Mr. Green’s silo, and that seemed to work fairly well.

 

4. oviduct — tube through which egg passes from ovary

Of course, most birds will have only an undeveloped oviduct and ovary on the right side.

 

5. philomath — scholar; astrologer

Whatever failings the noted philomath may have had, excessive humility was not among them.

 

6. wat — Buddhist temple (in parts of Southeast Asia)

In this village the wat was the social center, so we made our way thitherward to continue our inquiries.

 

7. Martinmas — November 11, St. Martin’s day

The weather at Martinmas was clear and cold, betokening a short and mild winter.

 

8. parfleche — rawhide with hair removed; item made from such hide

He accepted the gift parfleche gladly, doubtless planning to use it to resole his moccasins.

 

9. noma — gangrenous disease of the cheeks and mouth

Noma is only to be found in young children, and then only in those children already affected by other disease.

 

10. burgonet — light helmet for infantrymen with protective crest and cheek pieces

He thought himself well accoutered for war, though the veterans laughed to themselves at his fancy burgonet shaped like a lion’s head and chased with gold filigree.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(British idiom)

the Big Smoke — London; any big city

“Well, I was just thinking that it’s time maybe to be leaving the Big Smoke,” he said with a deceptive grin, “and you’ve just gone and made my decision for me.”

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. jingo — bellicose patriot

Appalled at Lord Muley’s quick insistence on massive reductions in the fleet, Sir Richard showed why he was considered the foremost jingo in the opposition with a long and loud speech of both hawkish and mawkish protest.

 

2. rondure — supple roundness; orb, sphere

As they swung through the canted bars of the nested Dymaxion domes, Harry found himself admiring Ellie’s splendid rondure perhaps more than was strictly necessary.

 

3. lemniscus — bundle of white nerve fibers in brainstem

Though Von Monakow’s explanation of the causative factors are not altogether satisfactory, his study of the consequences of lesions upon the lemniscus is nonetheless quite authoritative.

 

4. kleptocracy — rule by thieves

And thus was a once mighty republic torn asunder, turned into an insensate kleptocracy whose barbarous rulers were goverened only by their basest desires for gold and power and other, darker, lusts.

 

5. pibroch — funereal or martial bagpipe music

Long they heard the wailin’, the hesitating skirling, of Donny on the cliffs, trying over and over to master the pibroch his uncle had written for his pipes.

 

6. waffy — [British idiom] silly; faint; sickly, nauseating

But I come over all waffy and had to set down a spell, and have a bit of water.

 

7. zonulet — [archaic] little zone

I, too, was fascinated by that zonulet of love Herrick spoke of.

 

8. dioecious — [biology] having male and female sex organs in separate individuals (esp. of plants)

As even the most novice doper knows, marijuana plants are dioecious, and identification of the sexes is an important skill for a grower to have.

 

9. petrary — generic term for stone-heaving instruments of war

And now the order was given for all our petrary to be unleashed, and I loosed the mangonel with satisfaction, happy to see my small stones added to the huge boulders of the catapults and trebuchets.

 

10. farl — [Scots] flatbread or cake, typically cut in quadrants

He shared with me half a farl and I thanked him heartily, though the sodabread was hard chewing with no water or other drink.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(British idiom)

on one’s uppers — very poor, destitute [from idea of poverty so acute that one’s shoes have worn away all the leather, so that only the upper portion remains]

But mostly he was just lazy, only searching for work when he was really and truly on his uppers.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. trunnion — one of pair of pivots supporting something; cylindrical projection from cannon supporting same on its carriage

The bearings inside the telescope’s trunnions were manufactured to a previously unheard of precision, allowing the new astronomical wonder unparalleled accuracy in viewing the heavens.

 

2. okta — measurement of cloud cover equal to one eighth of the entire sky

At this time of year satellite imagery becomes quite difficult, as it is very rare that there are ever less than three oktas of clouds over the entire region.

 

3. bodkin — large thick needle for piercing leather or cloth; dagger

The craftsmanship is apparent in every seam of the wallet, the bodkin having been punched through the seams with only just enough force to make the fine overlapping stitches, unlike the gouged holes made by the machine process.

 

4. plash — to splash

The hem of his greatcoat was plashed by the puddle water with each step he made through the treacherous, muddy ground.

 

5. goaf — hayrick when in a barn; waste material of a mine

They hid the body among the goaf in that level, never expecting their crime to be discovered, nor the price to rise so high that it became profitable to work those diggings ever again.

 

6. accouter — to equip, to outfit

And so he set out into the cold desert night, accoutered only with a flashlight, a knife, and a single liter of water.

 

7. cat’s-paw (also cats paw or catspaw) — person used as a tool of another; [nautical] tiny breeze making ripples on a similarly small area of water; [nautical] hitch used to bind tackles to rope

He used Eddie as a cat’s-paw to once again get his nuts out of the fire.

 

8. apricity — [obsolete] light or heat of the sun

The housecat was stretched out upon the porch, endeavoring to absorb into his fur every bit of apricity from the pale winter sun.

 

9. catchment area — [British] area from which water drains into a particular lake or basin; area served by school or other institution

With pretensions of upward mobility, they decided to move across town to be in the best catchment area for their young daughters, though their wages had hardly been enough to pay the lower rent on their old place and besides the girls were only two years old at the time.

 

10. compunction — feeling of conscience

Perhaps the first time, so very many long years ago, he had felt a slight nagging compunction as he demanded the money from the single mother of three who had been his first assignment, but today he would punch a nun without a quiver of conscience, if she owed the boss a fiver.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(drug slang)

candy flip — to ingest LSD with MDMA

Some claim that candy flipping avoids all possibility of a bad trip, but even those proponents admit that there is an inevitable come-down the next day, perhaps not as severe as the hangover produced by alcohol, but somewhat severe nonetheless.