Friday Vocabulary

1. confusticate — [slang] to perplex, to bother, to confuse

With fourteen voices clamoring at him all at once demanding this and that and the other, Kip was so confusticated that he put the towels in the microwave and the sausages in the sink.

 

2. umbel — [botany] inflorescence of short flower stalks radiating from a common center

Poison hemlock produces quite lovely umbels of white flowers.

 

3. barouche — four-wheeled horse carriage with facing seats for two couples, having a collapsible top over the rear seat and a separate bench seat for the driver

In the back of the barouche with the top down I beheld two of the most gorgeous women in matching green satin dresses and hats.

 

4. gall — to chafe, to make sore by rubbing; to vex, to harass

Young Russell wore new boots more appropriate for a riding party than for climbing, and by the end of the first day the skin over his Achilles’ tendon was badly galled.

 

5. primeval — of or related to the first age of the world; ancient; primitive

And there they lived in this primeval glade, unsullied by the modern contrivances of modesty and sin.

 

6. Hatti-sherif — Turkish government decree bearing Sultanic mark making it irrevocable

Serbian independence was first granted official recognition in the Hatti-sherif of 1829, a concession by Turkey in consequence of the Treaty of Adrianople.

 

7. contradistinction — distinguishing by contrast or opposition

In contradistinction to most dancing at raves, which really can be done without any other person present, slam dancing is a joint activity, requiring, if not an actual partner, at least another dancer (one hopes!) to slam against.

 

8. maar — crater-shaped landform caused by volcanic explosion

Though it is easy to confuse a maar with an impact crater, the former are usually fairly small features, no wider than half a mile in most instances.

 

9. marish — marsh

The owner of the marish refused all culpability for the lost animals, claiming that if the shepherds could not keep their charges from his treacherous land it was not his fault.

 

10. prosopagnosia — inability to recognize faces, esp. of familiar people

Some view Capgras syndrome as similar to prosopagnosia, though of course actual physical trauma—lesion to the minor occipital lobe—is present in many if not most cases of the latter.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. luthier — maker of stringed instruments

In addition to being a talented songwriter in her own right, Shelsea is also a trained luthier, having learned the craft from her uncle who crafted guitars and mandolins for the greats of the Grand Ol’ Opry.

 

2. nard — scented balsam derived from the Himalayan spikenard

In the cramped room the aromas of cedar and nard lifted the young apprentice’s spirits, seeming to take him away from Pinchbeck Alley to distant cities of the east and far markets of mysterious spices and unknown fruits.

 

3. prank — to dress up, to bedeck

She so pranked herself with flowers and ribbons that the other passengers hardly recognized the timid maid who had first appeared before them in homespun dresses.

 

4. justle — variant of jostle

Here you can behold the various clerks justling for a place closest to the teller window, hoping to have their actions entered in the record first, and thus gaining credit with their respective houses.

 

5. deciduous tooth — mammalian tooth later replaced by a permanent tooth, milk tooth

After appearance the deciduous teeth continue to change, losing their roots and becoming thin and small until their bottom becomes only a point.

 

6. pard — [archaic] leopard

He moved with the dark feline grace of the pard on the hunt, with an economy of movement that gave no sign of the tense strength bound within his loins.

 

7. diegetic — of a narration or narrative, told by a narrator; of events or objects within the world of a story

You have to remember that every time dad revealed to me these fascinating stories of his youth, he was compelled to interrupt them with diegetic criticism of his own stupidity and callow foolishness at each juncture of what to me was a miraculously interesting life.

 

8. duppy — malevolent spirit

All of the bedclothes and clothes of the dearly departed were burned outside the house, so that a returning duppy would not feel welcome in his former abode.

 

9. hyphema — accumulation of blood within the front of the eyeball

After the fight he suffered a serious hyphema in his left eye and the doctor prescribed complete bed rest for a week.

 

10. percept — object of perception; mental ‘thing’ resulting from perception

You can argue that I experience the percept ‘orange’ when looking at that fruit, but I am only convinced I want to taste it instead of just looking at it.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(Irish)

make a hames of — to spoil or ruin through clumsiness, make a mess of

If you forget the keys tomorrow you’ll make a hames of the whole job, so see that you don’t.

Friday Vocabulary

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 objects, a consideration which had troubled the ancient School of Names in the time of Confucius.

 

3. cerise — bright red

For their trip he affected the same nautical look so beloved of L. Ron Hubbard, donning a captain’s cap, blue blazer, and an cerise ascot.

 

4. avaunt — [archaic] begone, go away

Avaunt thee, vile dog!

 

5. draughts — [British] checkers

To relieve some of the boredom while we waited for the rescue party to arrive, we fashioned a board and pieces from the ruined suitcase and played game after game of draughts.

 

6. ladybird — variant for ladybug

Just before I knocked at the door a ladybird alighted on my already outstretched hand, which I took as a sign of good favor for my endeavors.

 

7. scabrid — rough surfaced

The touch of his scabrid forefinger upon my cheek was almost more than I could stand.

 

8. susurration — whisper; rustling

Finally the savage fury of the storm abated and the rains ceased, leaving behind an eerie quiet made only more uncanny by the gentle susurration of the dying winds through the eucalyptus overhead.

 

9. pareidolia — misperception of meaningful patterns where none exist

It’s one thing to see a duck or a rabbit in the clouds, but it’s near lunatic pareidolia to find a message in Morse Code in the random abrasions on your old blue jeans.

 

10. fetiparous (also foetiparous) — [biology] giving birth before the young are fully developed

One of the advantages of fetiparous marsupials is the reduction of harm to the mother caused by long pregnancies during seasons bereft of food.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(British)

curate’s egg — something asserted to be both bad and good, but which is entirely awful

Much though I would like to proclaim this volume of short stories to be a mixed bag, a curate’s egg of fiction, my duty as a reviewer compels me to confess that it is a terrible collection of some of the worst ‘writing’ I have suffered through in years.

900 Books

Yesterday I finished my 900th book, counting back from the time when my wife gave me a barcode scanner and a book database and I started keeping track of such things, back in 2015.

My 900th book (as usual discounting comic books and graphic novels from my ‘official’ count, of which I’ve read some 118 (at last count)) was an early (almost her earliest) book of poetry from the acclaimed poet of Decatur, Athens, and Athens, A. E. Stallings: Hapax. I’ve liked Stallings’s work since I stumbled upon her poem “Alice, Bewildered” at the Poetry Foundation website—they no longer ‘carry’ it, but you can read it (as of today, 25 February 2023) here. Alice, of course, is one of my favorite characters from literature, and shows up as a guise of the poet in several of her works. (Her initial initial ‘A.’ hides the name Alicia, which is cognate, I suppose. I have no idea if she keeps the initials in homage to Housman, or for the usual reason, or if she just likes Russian style.) The book Hapax is a mixed bag, showing the poet trying to find her punctilious style. I liked the autobiographical section in the beginning the best, though I may just be prejudiced by my own foolish fulsome nostalgia for the South that is no more and likely never was. It’s a good book of poetry all through however; Joe Bob says check it out.

In this last set of a hundred books, once again, I’ve been reading a lot—a whole lot—of mysteries. Almost half of these books (as usual, setting aside the comic books and graphic novels I read) were in the Mystery & Thriller genre. Partly this is acause I’m reading most of my books at work, during my lunch, and that means light reading. Partly it’s because the deeper books take longer to read, maybe. [All of this paragraph up to now was simply copied from my last report on reading my 800th book.]

My reading pace was about the same as for the previous century of books: 258 days to read this last hundred, compared to 259 days for the set before. I see upon examination that I have not only not done any analysis of my previous set of hundred books read, I haven’t even given you the list! I’ll try to make that up to you over my weekend, which will start tomorrow

   1 Book per 2.58 Days   

Hoping to hit you soon with some real data, some real book lists….

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 purpose, in fact, of the whole system.

 

2. entrepôt — transshipment place for goods, warehouse; commercial distribution point

Hong Kong’s status as a legal entrepôt permitted packaging and other processing of mainland goods transshipped through the growing commercial center.

 

3. perdurance — persistence, duration, permanence

On the other hand, one can adapt the philosophy best known through the maxim of Heraclitus, denying any perdurance of things in space and (especially) time, a viewpoint that in its most extreme forms takes on a sort of Zen belief in only the existence of the ‘now’—to the exclusion of all else that the perceiving mind may claim for the physical world.

 

4. skirl — to shriek; to make a shrill, shrieking sound (on the bagpipes); to play the bagpipes

Then all at once the girls began to skirl with frenzied wail, joined at once by the dogs who, though they knew not what caused the alarm, knew well their duty to spread the warning far and wide.

 

5. argy-bargy — vigorous verbal dispute, loud wrangling

Even through the thick oak doors we could hear the voices raised in anger, but were nearly stunned by the tumult of the argy-bargy in the courtroom when the doors were opened.

 

6. lantern jaw — protruding lower jaw; long thin jaw

He also had a ludicrously noticeable lantern jaw which would have been more appropriate for a clown than an undertaker, which jaw he made even more noticeable by affecting a tuft of hair which I suppose he claimed for a goatee.

 

7. monocable — aerial ropeway using single wire rope for both support and transit

Although the lower initial costs for monocable systems may seem enticing, the expenses for upkeep are much higher than for a similar bicable implementation.

 

8. genuflect — to bend the knee in worship, to touch one knee to ground as sign of reverence

Now that Slocum has all the proxies in hand, you can be sure that each of us on the board will be forced to appear and genuflect before him to maintain our seats.

 

9. fuddle — to confuse; to inebriate; to tipple, to go on a drinking spree

“I fear your boy Tom has fuddled his last, if’n he’s passed out in the open on this sair cold and freezing night.”

 

10. paroicous — [botany] having male and female reproductive organs next to or near each other

Many of these Iberian mosses are paroicous, and can be gathered in any stony region where even slight dampness is present.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(British slang)

on the lash — drinking socially, usu. to excess

I always regretted going out on the lash the next day, but that night—as always—it seemed like an excellent idea.

Friday Vocabulary

1. orthopnea (also orthopnoea) — difficulty breathing except in standing or sitting upright position

Among the consequences of massive heart failure are dyspnea or orthopnea as the weakened ventricular muscles can no longer sustain the effort required.

 

2. splificate — [British slang] to annihilate, to obliterate, to destroy

That last week of less than two hours sleep a night had just about splificated my nerves, and I looked at the towel and the tongs in my visitor’s hands with a weary sigh.

 

3. metal — [British] to surface a road with broken stone

It was a surprise to find a solid road in the middle of the jungle, and it did my heart good to be standing on a good metalled roadway for the first time in weeks.

 

4. taw — to prepare raw material for use; to transform hides into leather without tannin, usu. by preparation of alum and salt

It was a poor place to store the tawed hides, for the slow leak had soaked and swelled the deerskins, and this swelling further enlarged the dangerous seeping cracks.

 

5. manicule — typographic mark of pointing hand: ☞

The difficult typeface was more than made up for by the clever notes in the margin, each marked by a delightful manicule.

 

6. impudicity — shamelessness, reckless lack of modesty

It is one thing to take note of the impudicity of today’s youth, but it is another to describe their moral turpitude with such lascivious care as to stimulate concupiscent envy.

 

7. mendicant — beggar; member of religious order depending entirely upon alms

“What’s with that mendicant staked out across the street, Joel? Have you been sent a watcher from heaven to encourage you to mend your wicked ways?”

 

8. valuta — currency, money

But it’s still quite easy to smuggle valuta, even in large amounts, into the war-torn region if you know how to keep a low profile.

 

9. squiz — glance, look, gander

“Let’s just take a squiz at your paperwork, make sure it’s all in order.”

 

10. jeofail — mistake in legal pleading; acknowledgement of such mistake

The judge stated that he was well aware of the Statute of Jeofails but the fact that the very identity of the plaintiff was somehow an open question seemed more than a trivial paperwork issue.

 

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 as you can imagine I’m quite chuffed.”

 

3. omadhaun — [Irish] foolish male

“Set it right down there, before you break the china, you big omadhaun,” Katie said, though her flashing eyes and bright smile belied her words.

 

4. ergodic — [mathematics] of or related to processes where large enough samples are statistically representative of the whole; of systems which will return to previously states given sufficient time

But though we had just seen the keys, either in the living room or the garage (or perhaps the bedroom, maybe the bathroom), no matter how we searched they did not turn up, and eventually we fell into an ergodic frenzy, once more looking in the previously searched areas, in the desperate hope that we had somehow overlooked the fob in our first three surveys.

 

5. jagger — pedlar; carrier

From his overburdened pack the squat little jagger pulled a fine leather belt, which I assumed he’d scavenged from the wreck of the Portuguese caravel.

 

6. dray — low cart for heavy loads, esp. a beer cart; sledge, sled

No person is allowed to ride upon a dray unless the horses are reined; a handbrake is not sufficient.

 

7. patronize — to treat in a condescending manner; to frequent as customer; to act as a patron of

“Don’t patronize me, Chester! I’ve been drilling out atomic bearings when you were just twinkling space dust in your pappy’s bleary eyes.”

 

8. bradawl — small hand-boring tool

Be sure to place the bradawl across the grain, else you may split the wood.

 

9. pyorrhea — discharge of pus, esp. from gums

Though every disease of the diet may produce pyorrhea, the manner in which the pyorrhea presents is different for different causes.

 

10. dividers — compass used to measure or divide lines on a map or plan

He had dropped his dividers onto his bare foot while completing the plans, puncturing his big toe, the toe had become infected, and now he walked with a noticeable limp.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(British informal)

mod cons — modern conveniences

The yacht was furnished with all the mod cons you’d expect to see in a landlocked flat, with full-sized doors even below decks, thick carpets, and even a bidet in the master bath.

Friday Vocabulary

1. assiduous — persistently diligent, constant

I should have been more specific in my request, for Hervey’s assiduous nature interpreted my vague instructions as an order to read the entirety of the New York Herald-Tribune‘s sports pages from 1923 through 1950.

 

2. aroint — [archaic] begone, get hence

Aroint thee, ye vile knave, or taste my sword’s steel!

 

3. avenaceous — of or related to oats

“Oh, to be sure, it’s hearty, and healthy too, your avenaceous loaves, only it hurts my teeth, and the grains get stuck in my gums.”

 

4. abreact — to release a repressed emotion through the process of re-experiencing it

The shrink told me I was unable to fully abreact the response to my childhood trauma due to my deeply ingrained resistance to psychology, but I think it was because he was bollocks as a hypnotherapist.

 

5. abject — wretched, miserable; despicable

Difficult it was to regard the shivering, weeping, abject figure before us and feel anything but contempt for the former High Lord of the surrounding demesne.

 

6. abomination — object of disgust or hatred, detestable thing; feeling of extreme loathing

Woe! Woe to you cities which would permit this abomination within your walls! Woe to you people who advertise and encourage the congregation of these foul fiends!

 

7. autarchy — self-government; absolute power

Once the generals had made this concession, however, Lerbeck’s sway over the military was complete, and now the former second secretary found himself in a position of complete autarchy over the tiny principality.

 

8. attenuate — to make thin or thinner; to reduce the force of

The effectiveness of the vaccines made from this attenuated virus was proven by the much healthier flocks and herds in those regions.

 

9. anhedonia — inability to experience pleasure

Since the accident she just sits by the window in a state of anhedonia, not to say catatonia, and we are at our wit’s end just what to do.

 

10. amygdala — [anatomy] almond-shaped mass of nuclei within the temporal lobe with role in memory and emotion; pl. the tonsils; [obsolete] almond

Cocaine users showed abnormal patterns in the amygdala both during and after such stimulus.

 

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 to be a stumer, but to my surprise the bank cashed it no questions asked.

 

3. militate — to substantially weigh (usu. against)

If the other witnesses support Birdie’s claims, this well may militate against him being sent back to the jug.

 

4. hamesucken — [Scots law] criminal assault of a person within his own dwelling

The courts have always held that though the victim does not need to actually own a residence for the charge of hamesucken to be brought, an attack against a temporary guest within a lodge, hotel, or even a private home does not meet the requirements of the crime.

 

5. halidom — holy place, sanctuary; sacred thing or relic

And there and then the three men swore a mighty oath upon the halidom of the sainted beggarboy Richard, in whose chapel they were, not to pause until they had avenged their lord and recovered his children.

 

6. pericranium — [anatomy] membrane surrounding the skull, the periosteum of the cranial bones

In the case of severe head wounds, Galen urges that first the physician must determine whether the pericranium has been injured, though the doctor should only separate it from the contused flesh at first.

 

7. quodlibet — [archaic] topic for philosophical debate; thus, any subtle or abstruse argument or debate

Though Chester could propound either side of any linguistic or theological quodlibet, he had great difficulty deciding the best course of action if caught out in the rain.

 

8. brumation — period of torpor and sluggish activity

The young sea turtles are believed by some to enter brumation during the winter months, embedding themselves in the sea bottom, but recent surveys of drag catches in the channel have shown no increase in turtles caught, leading many to question the assertion.

 

9. gazingstock — someone stared at

Will you always insist on wearing such outlandish garb, making yourself a gazingstock of everyone in the street?

 

10. abscission — [botany] natural separation of parts from a plant; cutting off

During the process of abscission this membrane becomes thinner and thinner, until the weight of the leaf finally pulls it away from the branch.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(slang)

style it out — to act in a confident manner in an embarrassing or uncomfortable situation so as to cause others to ignore one’s difficulty

And you think we can just style it out with your breeches torn off, and those red claw marks upon your arse exposed for all the world to see?

1000 Books (not really)

In the beginning was the word ….

Well, in fact those words come well over halfway through this, The Book. I started reading a little bit each day just over a year ago, as sort of a 2022 project, and have just finished the last chapter of The Revelation of Saint John the Divine this morning. And since I’ve been tracking my ‘books read’ since oh, about 2015, I get to tell you that this is the thousandth book I’ve completed since the start of that silly tracking enterprise … though as is so often the case, there’s a caveat. As I have told you before, I do not count in my ‘official’ ‘count’ any comic books or graphic novels or suchlike items. And if we leave those to one side, this version of The Bible (KJV, and in very helpful large print) is Book #884 in my all-time (well, since 2015, anyway) reading list. However, it seems worthwhile both to note that I finished reading The Bible cover to cover, and to give it a pride of place as the 1000th book read, even with an asterisk. (Don’t think I’m humble-bragging; I am quite aware that I’m just out and out bragging.) (Oh, and yes, I did manipulate to some extent my reading so that this would be #1000, dragging out Malachi (see below) and reading a few quick mysteries to get up to the requisite number.) (And oh, again, at least this asterisk is in no way as shameful as that that should be applied to every place the name of Barry Bonds. May Hank Aaron’s name be hallowed forevermore.)

But anyway, I really did read the entire Bible in the last year and past few weeks. I attacked the tome along three fronts, beginning at … well, the Beginning (Genesis), as well as the start of The New Testament, and also the Psalms. Thus I was able to balance a few of the lengthier ‘begats’ with some nice poetry and another telling of the passion of Christ. I had tried once or twice a recommended sequence from some Bible site or other, bouncing from here to there, but it never took hold of me and I found it not as easy to follow as just plodding along from book to book as I did. Anyway, I found The Holy Book quite worth reading, and filled a quote book full of … well, you can find better commentaries than mine, so I’ll just shut up now, and get back to reading The Action Bible, a comic book version my son-in-law gave me for Christmas. Until next time, then.