1. excursive — digressive What was supposed to have been a pithy précis turned into an excursive epic under the weight of his overheavy pen, topping two hundred pages of turbid prose. 2. peterman — [slang] safecracker Though once he was renowned as a peterman of the first water, today he is as honest …
Tag Archives: bonus word
Friday Vocabulary
1. tegument — covering; integument He stood haughtily above the field, his bronzed and polished armor a bright protective tegument over the doomed flesh within. 2. quiff — lock or curl of hair hanging over the forehead My eyes kept straying to the oiled quiff of his dark hair which he affected in some …
Friday Vocabulary
1. glister — to sparkle Suddenly the last rock gave way and we felt the welcome breeze of the night air upon our begrimed faces, and beheld in wonder the glistering heavens spangled with an almost blinding glory of stars. 2. sequacious — tending to blindly follow others; pliable, easily molded But the sequacious …
Friday Vocabulary
1. evert — to turn outward or inside out And so everted has the American Dream become that we are sated by likes and follows and bundles of steam and dark mode. 2. ophiophagous — eating snakes When I interned among the ophiophagous lawyers then practicing in Albany, I thought of the experience as …
Friday Vocabulary
1. spancel — noosed rope used to hobble an animal Only a short spancel bound his ankles, but his arms were held tightly behind his back in a pair of police handcuffs. 2. traducianism — doctrine that the soul is generated from the parents at the moment of conception Tertullian’s view of the soul …
Friday Vocabulary
1. indurate — to harden; to make callous; to inure Yet this same experience which had left me an unrepentant criminal had not indurated Wilfred’s heart and soul. 2. parterre — ornamental flower beds; rear section of main floor in an auditorium All these delectable vegetables were surrounded by rows of shrubbery, beyond which …
Friday Vocabulary
1. doolally — [informal British] out of one’s head, temporarily non compos mentis “You see, George went a bit doolally after losing last night, and he’s burnt the whole game, box and all.” 2. thurifer — acolyte carrying the thurible We first began to suspect that something was wrong with the thurifer when the …
Friday Vocabulary
1. screw — small amount (of a product) wrapped in a twist of paper; such a twist of paper In the ragamuffin’s pocket (the one without the hole in it) were only two tarnished farthings, a screw of tobacco, and a piece of rough twine. 2. univocal — having only a single meaning, unambiguous …
Friday Vocabulary
1. heliograph — signaling device using mirrors to reflect flashes of sunlight; instrument for taking pictures of the sun The gang hid out in this canyon fastness after each robbery, secure from the sheriff’s searchers, until Old Kentuck would signal them by heliograph that the coast was clear. 2. rootle — to dig with …
Friday Vocabulary
1. murrey — purple-red Somehow the murrey lining made the black hood even darker. 2. dobbin — ordinary farm horse The county fair has everything you might want, from fancy pickles to thrilling fancies, and if you want to take a flier on the dobbins, well, we’ve got that too. 3. matriculate — …