Educated Guesswork

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.

 

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.

 

1. doryphore — persistent pest, obstinately pedantic critic

And of course Reinhard, the office doryphore, noticed that we’d had to change the printer paper, and that the later pages of the report used 92 brightness paper instead of the 96 bright at the beginning.

 

2. aoudad — Barbary sheep

The hills around Hearst Castle still contain some of the animals the newspaper magnate once housed in his private zoo, including zebras amongst the cattle and the horned aoudads which visitors may see as they ascend to the immense home.

 

3. slut’s wool — [idiom] dust and debris that gathers beneath furniture (in supposed reference to slatternly housekeeping habits)

Looking for the missing contact lens with my flashlight at ground level among the slut’s wool beneath the old armchair in the corner, I realized that even if we found the dropped ophthalmic aid, Shelley would never want to stick it back in her eye, covered as it would be with detritus and dust from the previous millennium.

 

4. pisstake — [UK or Australian slang] parody, pastiche

It really weren’t much of a holiday special, more like a cobbled together pisstake of A Christmas Carol that gave pride of place to our primary sponsor that year, Bevin’s Buttered Hams.

 

5. burrnesha — [Albanian] Balkan sworn virgins, women in parts of western Balkan regions who take an oath of celibacy and gain privileges otherwise available only to men

There never were very many burrnesha in these mountains even at the time of the first reports of the practice, from 19th Century travelers, and today there may be only as few as a dozen ‘sworn virgins’ left living.

 

6. roman-fleuve — long involved novel about lives of intricately connected people; sequence of related novels detailing (for example) lives of a single family across generations; very lengthy and wordy text

And if this biography or memoir or whatever it pretends to be is actually the masterful roman-fleuve its proponents (among them Professor Halders) claim it to be, then this antepenultimate episode in this interminable work is its cloaca, the foul sewer into which this sluggish river of logorrhea finally descends.

 

7. Transoxania — region beyond the Oxus River, northeast of the historical Persian province of Khorasan

His commitment to the arts was well known, and the distinctive style of Timurid miniature painting is still one of the glories of Transoxania.

 

8. ecru — very light beige, color of unbleached linen; dark greyish yellow

On the train north to the summer retreat, Liesl was so proud of her ecru veil that she refused to remove it even when biscuits were bought from the treats cart.

 

9. holus bolus — all together, all at once, entirely

The urchin tried to eat all the food on his plate holus bolus and I had to gently remind him that he had loads of time to eat, and that all the food was his and his alone.

 

10. dramaturge — adviser to theater company about repertoire and public relations

Strangely enough, even though the director and the entire company knew that “Ms.” Patton was far too old to play Juliet, it was only Travers, our poor put-upon dramaturge, who dared to speak the unspeakable directly to her face.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(UK informal)

bog standard — just ordinary (with derogatory connotation)

He showed up in that bog standard Fiesta of his wearing the same clothes she’d seen him in earlier that day at work, and he’s wondering now why she doesn’t return his calls?

 

1. gallipot — small glazed jar used by an apothecary

Between the two of them they left hardly one gallipot of the sweet German wine given us by the count.

 

2. galipot — unrefined turpentine found on some European pines

Though the galipot is of better quality than the dried barras more often found, neither are suitable for distillation, at least not using the DeSalvo method.

 

3. garabance (also garavance) — chickpea similar to (if not identical with) garbanzo beans

Though some natives make a paste from the garabance which they appear to enjoy with their habitual spices, the majority of these peas are used as fodder for swine.

 

4. confirmand — candidate for confirmation or baptism

In the case of an adult confirmand, of course, this issue does not arise, and deeper theological questions may be broached if the priest so deems.

 

5. onomastic — of or related to personal or geographical names

The derivation of ‘Whitehill’ from ‘Whip Hell’ seemed a bit of onomastic legerdemain to our young scholar, a philologist of the old school.

 

6. deixis — use of context-dependent words, referring to something by use of such words

Is Gödel’s encoding some sort of magical deixis smuggled into the heart of mathematics which destroys the foundations of logic by shifting the ‘meaning’ of a number, say, to some farflung proposition which may or may not be true, may or may not be provable?

 

7. inspissated — thickened, congealed, dried by evaporation; condensed

Thus Gandhi started upon his fateful confrontation with the British Empire by presenting the powers-that-were the material fact of this inspissated salt.

 

8. ounce — snow lepoard; lynx or cougar

Sir Billibotham’s expedition was the first to explicitly hunt for the breeding grounds of the ounce, though of course the tragedy of the jeweled puttees stopped the search almost before it began.

 

9. scullion — menial kitchen servant; base person

Theresa was hardly fit to be even the lowest scullion in the main kitchen, so vile were her manners and language after her years in the Levant.

 

10. crambo — guessing game involving rhyming words; word that rhymes with another

You can play at crambo all you want, but all that jive went out with blank verse.

 

11. quaternion — four double-folded sheets of paper gathered together for binding; group of four things; hypercomplex number with one real and four imaginary components

One of the legendary Tales of the Desert Fathers speaks of a monk so obedient that though he had just began to write the first letter of a work he was copying onto a new quaternion, he came so quickly at his master’s call that he did not hesitate even long enough to complete the full circle of the initial letter ‘O’.

 

12. continent — having or displaying restraint in bodily functions or appetites

T. E. Lawrence spoke of how lack of opportunity can make a man, a people, continent in their actions and passion, but even in the desert the lieutenant could not find it in himself to bridle his fierce urges.

 

13. tergiversate — to hem and haw, to equivocate; to change one’s mind, to be apostate

Though pressed upon by both sides, Hanquin managed to tergiversate so long that the question became moot when the hordes of angry monks broke into the chamber.

 

14. jakes — [idiom] outhouse

And so they caught him, as the saying goes, with his pants down in the jakes, and as tragic as his death was, it was the comic elements that were repeated and retold in The Lay of The Last Sit.

 

15. ayah — nanny or nurse (usu. native) working for Europeans in Southeast Asia

“We couldn’t even trust Billy’s ayah,” said the colonel, “who—though she’d seen my older child Jenny from diapers to gowns—turned out to be a communist.”

 

16. pseudopod — temporary protoplasmic protrusion of cells or unicellular organisms

From the maddened protesters there now struck a frenzied mass of the angry mob through the line of police and directly into the marble building, as if a pseudopod of hate had wrenched itself from the heart of dark rage to strike at the machine that had caused its ire.

 

17. schnorrer — [slang, fr. Yiddish] one who sponges off of others, moocher

“No more of this ‘He promised to pay the rest next week’ crap; he’s a schnorrer who’s outstayed his welcome in my life.”

 

18. accumb — to recline while dining as did the ancient Romans

Due to the consequences of this horrific accident, Petrov was forced to accumb at table in order for digestion to proceed, so we all tried to make light of the situation and pretend we were all ancient philosophers or something.

 

19. spikenard — aromatic ointment derived from plant of the valerian family; such a plant

Keeping his eyes averted the young page presented the golden chalice of spikenard to the lady, almost stumbling over the stairs and spilling the precious balm of the east.

 

20. goetic — of or related to dark magic or necromancy

Most Wednesdays Roger could be found practicing goetic conjurations or, if in straitened circumstances, performing tarot readings for paying customers at the local coffee shop.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(colloquial)

natter — to prate

Do you two have to natter on about batting runs earned and stolen averages while we’re waiting for the doctor’s verdict?

 

(informal British)

bumph — useless papers or documents

I hardly see the point in reading through all this bumph when we still don’t even know if Leslie has found the missing skillet.

 

1. lamella — gill of a mushroom; plate or scale of bone or other tissue

The secondary lamellae arise within the spaces between the primary or earlier gills as those latter grow away from the stem.

 

2. syntagma (also syntagm [linguistics]) — syntactic component; arrangement of components producing meaning or a greater whole; phalanx of Macedonian spearmen

But of course he was known best for the three syntagmata detailing all that was known at his era of the vagaries and nuances of Akkadian law and custom.

 

3. thrombus — blood clot formed within an organism’s blood vessels

If the antidote is not received quickly, thrombi will appear in the lungs with the consequent fatal effects.

 

4. keimelia (more commonly cimelia) — stored up or hidden treasure

Thorsten permitted me to peruse this rare volume, opening up his keimelia of rare books to me in an extremely generous gesture.

 

5. whipster — know-it-all, smart aleck

And then your cousin, that blithe whipster, had the audacity to lecture my father on the proper way to harvest our melons.

 

6. Kufic (also Cufic) — of or related to the Iraqi city of Kufa; of or related to Arabic characters used in originally writing the Koran

Though the Kufic characters were used in manuscripts for only three hundred years, they may be seen in inscriptions for far longer, well into the Fifteenth Century of the Common Era, and indeed the takbir on the present-day Iraqi flag uses the Kufic script.

 

7. hidalgo — gentleman or lesser nobility in Spain or Hispanophone regions

He dropped the reins into the hands of the shoeless peasant with all the foolish pride of the landless hidalgo.

 

8. pensile — hanging down

The Red-wing Oriole generally builds its pensile nest from long meadow grasses if these are available.

 

9. manciple — steward in charge of supplies for a college, monastery, or law offices

Our table was always excellent, for we had that best of all manciples, not looking askance at sharp dealing, but never to the detriment of the house.

 

10. palinode — ode or other poem retracting views of an earlier poem; recantation

Once upon a time, changing one’s view necessitated at least the artistic endeavor of a palinode, whilst today one merely screams “reverse ferret” and goes on as if nothing had ever been said differently.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(UK newspaper term)

reverse ferret — sudden change of editorial position, esp. with no recognition of previous view

While Orwell’s 1984 posited a severe system of psychological shocks to induce one to give up previously held tenets, nowadays merely searching for more clicks is enough to induce a reverse ferret.

1. azote — nitrogen

Azote is necessary for most plants, though the form in which it can be absorbed varies; beets, for example, require nitrates for an abundant crop.

 

2. phlegm — sticky mucus from throat and lungs; one of the four humors of medieval medical theory, causing sluggish temperament; composure, calmness, apathy

Funds are allotted in the latest state budget for removal of stains from the assembly floor carpet, caused by the habit of certain members to display insouciance towards respiratory health, usually in the form of hawking phlegm at the opposite side of chambers when discomfited.

 

3. tenebrescence — reversible change in color upon exposure to sunlight

Most sodalite will exhibit tenebrescence, especially under strong ultraviolet light.

 

4. argosy — large merchant ship; merchant fleet; large supply

Word reached the pirates in their hidden cove of an argosy returning heavy-laden through the nearby strait.

 

5. helve — handle of a tool, esp. of an axe or hammer

Though my strange companion wielded only an old helve against our armored foes, he tore into them like an iceberg through the Titanic.

 

6. obsequy — funeral rite

Once more we found ourselves foregathered at the bar for the obsequy of his political career.

 

7. mCi — [abbreviation] millicurie

Federal regulations restrict the amount of tritium used in wristwatches to 25 mCi.

 

8. cate — food delicacy

From the locker beneath his bed he pulled a selection of cates and even a small bottle of wine, surprising us with his unwonted generosity.

 

9. exegesis — critical or interpretative explanation of a text, esp. of The Bible

As important as the faculties for vigorous exegesis are, they mean nothing without a dedication to live a truly Christian life.

 

10. fauteuil — wooden armchair with open sides

The vast hall was almost empty save for those dark nacreous pillars, but as we walked down the long aisle, we spied a lone figure sitting at the far end in a gold and white fauteuil before what appeared to be a black or navy curtain.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(outdated nomenclature abandoned during World War I)

German Ocean — North Sea

Keeping the route open between the German Ocean and the Baltic Sea was of critical importance to Lord Utherson’s plan.

1. raptus — seizure; ravishing, rape; medieval form of marriage by abduction

Of course the most famous person accused of raptus is last week’s featured poet, Geoffrey Chaucer.

 

2. posture chair — office chair designed to support and conform to natural human form

Ryback leaned back in the dark wooden posture chair which was as emblematic of his new rank as the words “Editor In Chief” upon his frosted glass door.

 

3. scotophilic — of or related to that which thrives in darkness

Renny turned his back upon family, friends, church, in fact all society he had heretofore known, and allowed himself to fall prey to his most vile scotophilic impulses towards perversion, fascism, and narcissistic misanthropy.

 

4. bund — causeway, embankment; secondary retaining wall surrounding tank for fluid

Though the bund was well-constructed and of an evening one could see locals promenading along it in the cooling air, still the judge observed that the structure had caused hardship to several towns downstream, and he ordered it cut or opened.

 

5. flash spoon — spoon-shaped metal fishing lure designed to attract through visual action

I prefer a trusty flash spoon to a rattle spoon in most cases, especially in clear water.

 

6. azan (also adhan) — Muslim call to prayer

We reached the abandoned pavilion just as the azan sounded from a distant minaret.

 

7. whoozit (also whosit) — thing, whatchamacallit; person

“Hand me that whoozit over there, that’s right, the one with the weird gray tendrils still dangling from the blade.”

 

8. prepotent — superior in power or authority; possessing genetic material more likely to predominate

Here in this stuffy chamber, finally before the prepotent minister, I found my anxiety and paralyzing abasement replaced by a firm conviction in the rightness of the action I proposed.

 

9. proctalgia — rectal pain

The third morning I almost hesitated before the troop when getting in the saddle, so vivid were my memories of my proctalgia from yesterday’s ride.

 

10. tarmac — Tarmacadam; asphalt; airport runway

The petrol gave out just as we cleared the last obstruction and we hit the tarmac with a bone-crunching bang.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(US slang, from Fr. for mackerel = pimp)

mack daddy — successful pimp; playa with the ladies

“You wouldn’t think it to look at him now,” Tony said, pointing to the shuffling janitor, “but he was a real mack daddy back in the day.”