Educated Guesswork

1. malacologist — one who studies mollusks

The French malacologist Pierre Denys de Montfort is most famous for his fanciful descriptions of the kraken, a enormous octopus that supposedly pulled large ships down beneath the waves.

2. cochineal — scarlet or crimson dye primarily used in cookery, made of a dried powder derived from the insect of the same name

The chef had added cochineal to the baked apples in honor of the family colors, matching the banners and flags which festooned the dining hall.

3. cyclamen — perennial of the primrose family with white, red, or pink flowers

The corm of the cyclamen plant is quite poisonous, though swine are unaffected by the toxin and will happily eat it, from whence the name sowbread.

4. sleeper — [British] railroad tie; horizontal load-distributing wooden beam

Constable Gill found the rucksack behind a pile of sleepers at the end of the work camp, along with another surprise—a baby boy.

5. tannoy — loudspeaker system for public announcements

The crowd, which had been hushed after Parson fell, became almost completely silent as the voice over the tannoy announced the substitution.

6. doggo — [British slang] in hiding

After the near disaster with the parson, I decided to lie doggo for a while in the hunting shed I’d found in the southern side of the woods.

7. American cloth — enameled oilcloth

The large basket was divided by a board covered with American cloth, dividing it into two equal compartments.

8. sudoriparous — secreting sweat

The sudoriparous glands may be found around the hair follicles, arranged in a circular pattern.

9. lakh — [Indian] a hundred thousand

The Kauravas still had fourteen lakhs of cavalry held in reserve.

10. froward — contrary, refractory, untoward

Not only must he be punished, but, like a froward child, he must be made to see the error of his evilly disposed ways.

Bonus Vocabulary

(internet slang)

ratio’d (also ratioed) — (said of tweet) having more comments than likes; having a comment with many more likes than original tweet

When @steak_umm was ordered to post that ‘hot’ SteakUmm® video he knew he was gonna get ratio’d.

1. skew-whiff — askew, obliquely

And just as we had gotten Mrs. Heriot back up on her feet, here came Jon the cooper charging down the hillside riding skew-whiff on his dappled gray mare.

2. antimasque — grotesque dance preceding or appearing between acts of a masque

And finally the rude players of the second antimasque scurried away off stage, leaving a calm scene of bucolic peace into which the two court ladies appearing as Prudence and Remembrance made their stately way.

3. chiffonier — short sideboard enclosed by doors, sometimes with shelves at top; tall and narrow chest of drawers, often topped by a mirror; rag-picker

I had angrily removed my collar and set it atop the chiffonier, when I suddenly caught sight of my own face, positively purple with fury.

4. foot up — to total a bill at its bottom

If you cannot find yourself at your desk at six o’clock every morning, it matters not how quickly you can foot up the accounts in pounds, shillings, and pence.

5. smaragdine — of or relating to emeralds; emerald green

I found myself staring deep into her gorgeous dark eyes, hypnotized by the smaragdine sparks hidden therein.

6. anagogic — spiritual; of mystical interpretation

Whitmer began to expound upon his anagogic interpretation of toast, detailing how the sacrifice of the amino acids in the bread to the radiant heat is transubstantiated through the mystical process into a revelatory new substance, the extrinsic goal of the Eleusinian Mysteries.

7. damson — small dark purple or black plum; dark to medium violet

Surely hers is not the only damson bonnet to be found in the village?

8. anfractuous — sinuous, circuitous

But it seemed that the more closely I tried to follow his anfractuous exposition the more hopelessly confused I became.

9. dimity — stout thin cotton fabric, with raised stripes

Herr Ploetzl greeted me in a pale yellow dimity dressing gown, grasping and shaking my hand as if he was trying to wring a towel dry.

10. scrip — small bag, satchel, wallet (esp. one carried by a beggar or pilgrim)

He rooted around in the worn leather scrip and finally extracted two plastic twenty-sided dice, one white and one black.

Bonus Vocabulary

(idiom, from sentry’s challenge)

qui vive — alert, state of watchfulness

Best keep on the qui vive until the sun is well and fully risen.

1. bariatric — of or related to treatment of obesity and associated conditions

He was too tall to use the ordinary walker whilst recovering from surgery, so they gave him a bariatric rollator instead, as that device could be adjusted to suit his great height.

2. carceralism — philosophy of or belief in prisons and imprisonment as a public safety institution

While some point to carceralism as the major culprit behind a perceived failure of modern policing, others find this a fictive target, a straw man argument for so-called ‘progressives’ to attack as a means of further eroding the stability of the social order.

3. nekyia (also nekya) — necromantic rite in Ancient Greece

Questions about a supposed afterlife, and the possibility of some existence after death are found in the earliest human literature, as demonstrated by the nekyia of Odysseus in the great Homeric epic.

4. Heptasophs — defunct fraternal organization active in latter half of 19th Century, primarily in southern United States

The Order of Heptasophs was believed to have been inspired by the so-called Mystical Seven, one of the first American college fraternal societies.

5. emerods — [archaic] hemorrhoids

Though its loss was grievous to the tribes of Israel, the capture of the Ark of the Covenant was not an unqualified victory for the Philistines, who suffered from a “plague of emerods” that afflicted the “secret parts” of the captors.

6. cataplasm — [obsolete] poultice; plaster

When her agonies continued I placed a cataplasm of bark and laudanum on her belly and prayed for the best.

7. pediculous — infested with lice, lousy

We stopped at an unfriendly inn, finding only cold gruel for sustenance and pediculous pallets upon the even colder floor.

8. holland — opaque linen cloth

The small garret was suffused in murky light, the bright sunlight beyond the gable window blocked by an unfinished holland drapery.

9. vavasor — feudal vassal ranking just below baron

Like many another vavasor, Prentys was prickly and proud, easily offended if he felt in the least his rights were being slighted.

10. fasciculate — arranged in bunches or bundles

The tree is notable for the fasciculate leaves which tend to grow only at the extremities of its branches.

Bonus Vocabulary

(Australian idiom)

stone the crows — expression of annoyance or surprise

“Well, stone the crows!” fumed Bertie. “We won’t be on their trail after all. The bandits drained all our petrol.”

1. holism — theory or system asserting that the whole is greater than the parts

From this youthful belief in a spiritual and psychological holism he moved to an even more radical reductionism, preaching that all so-called ‘elevated states’ stemmed from a combination of a mere three substances found within brain chemistry.

2. pig it — [idiom] to live in a slovenly, messy fashion

Anabelle had been gone barely a week yet he had pigged it so severely since she left that not a single surface in the apartment was uncovered by fast food bags or beer bottles or other detritus of his new filthy lifestyle.

3. syllogomania (also sullegomania) — collectionism, compulsive hoarding, mental derangement characterized by obsessive collecting

Though he spent hours each day—perhaps as much as 36 hours each week—sorting and organizing and labelling all his files—Jacquet never admitted how much his digital syllogomania was taking over his entire life.

4. secundus — second

Secundus, setting a set goal for savings at this time is more practical than arguing over buying a house, when neither you nor your girlfriend have anywhere near the required cash or credit to do so, making your entire argument moot.

5. velum — [biology] membrane; the soft palate; [meteorology] widespread thin cloud

Velar consonants such as the hard ‘g’ or ‘k’ in English are so named because the back of the tongue contacts the velum during their articulation.

6. anathema — detested or hated thing or person, abomination; formal curse pronounced as part of excommunication

After the incident with the ferret, the very notion of furries and plushies became anathema to him.

7. shatter — to break into pieces; [drug slang] cannabis extract similar to wax with translucent amber to yellow appearance and tendency to break, with affects (allegedly) similar to hash oil

Marco’s hopes were shattered when he realized that instead of shatter he had purchased a glop of oily Play-Doh.

8. swathe — to wrap in layers of material; to bandage

Around the camp we took bets on Adrian’s hairstyle, which none of us had ever seen, swathed as it was beneath the keffiyeh he habitually wore.

9. merle — blackbird

I can no more stop smiling at her loveliness than the merle can stop singing in the dappled wood.

10. volt (also volte) — leap or jerk in fencing to avoid a thrust; turning in a tight circle in dressage

Keeping the mare’s croup to the center of the circle, Lardley managed a quite passable volt before his outside leg began to cramp and the horse gave up on the evolution.

Bonus Vocabulary

(railroads)

journal box — metal box on side frame of railroad truck containing bearings and one end of an axle

Make sure to check the journal boxes of every car to be sure they all have plenty of grease before the run up to the Big Twisty.

1. equipollent — of equal power; logically equivalent

The first mistake in Wilber’s reasoning came when he declared that this negation was equipollent with absence, whereas even a schoolchild could have told him that not getting dessert was not the same as getting nothing at all.

2. misease — [archaic] misery, discomfort, suffering

The solitary life which had been to him a comfort now turned to great misease as he sorely felt the want of friends and had to rely upon paid companions and servitors.

3. againward — once more; back again

Though his troth he plighted that Whitsuntide Eve, never to return, still he found his steed leading him againward ever and anon so heartsick was his longing.

4. agal — cord around keffiyeh holding it in place

Of course, if you simply find it too difficult to properly wrap the keffiyeh, you can use an agal to hold it upon your head, though you lose much of the protective usefulness of the headgear.

5. hexapod — animal having six feet, insect

“In the continuing war for survival between man and the hexapods, only an utter fool would bet against the insect.”

(from the 1954 film Mesa Of Lost Women)
 

6. empyema — condition wherein pus collects in bodily cavity, particularly in the pleural cavity

They still gave him a medal, though he died from an empyema and not from German bullets, and his hometown buried him like a hero, with a monument and speeches and all.

7. evilfavoredness — state of being ill favored

I do not say he is evil, but he is plagued by such evilfavoredness that his company is not such as I would care to enjoy.

8. keratolysis — shedding of the epidermis, esp. its horny layers

Peter ascribed the funk of his room to his pitted keratolysis, which we all simply called ‘stinkfoot’.

9. minutia — tiny detail (usu. pl.)

He often gets bogged down in the minutiae of a problem, missing the main point entirely.

10. scurryfunge — [obsolete] to rush about cleaning one’s house just before company comes over

Wilma and Jeffrey only called as they were exiting the freeway, so I hardly had any time for cleaning house and only scurryfunged for ten minutes hiding this and moving that before I heard their knock upon my front door.

Bonus Vocabulary

(architecture)

coping stone — stone forming the uppermost course of a wall; utmost or completing element

Doctor Jackson felt that his work on semi-particulate flow would be the coping stone of his life’s work, but his colleagues feared that it was simply another seductive dead end, like fractals.

1. bdellium — fragrant gum resin; the plant producing this resin

We are told that manna was the color of bdellium, which can be found in several shades similar to those of amber, though in plant form it is a greenish white berry.

2. pteruge — protective strip of leather or stiffened linen, used as skirt or flexible addition to armor in ancient Greek or Roman armies

But the tiny dart, coated in a poisonous ichor, stuck fast to a stray pteruge dangling from my decorative epaulet, and so I was saved—for the moment, at least.

3. oblation — office or sacrament of the Eucharist; religious or charitable offering

The malt liquor poured out onto the 7-11 parking lot, a foaming oblation to a not-so-blithe spirit who though gone was hardly forgotten.

4. pukka — proper, genuine

We simply must get the electrician to replace these extension cords and cables with pukka wiring, or one day all the lights are going to blow.

5. virulent — extremely noxious; intensely poisonous; very bitter, highly acrimonious

If Mr. Deavers thinks that I am going to merely suffer silently while bombarded by these increasingly virulent verbal and written assaults he is very much mistaken.

6. ichneumon — Egyptian mongoose; parasitic wasp or other insect which lays its eggs in the larvae or pupae of other insects

In ancient Egypt the ichneumon was revered because of its penchant for devouring the eggs of crocodiles.

7. hylozoism — theory that all matter has life, that life is merely a property of matter

But the proponents of the Rife microscope tend to veer off into a radical hylozoism, discovering in optical artifacts veridical clues to unsuspected lifeforms only visible to their specially trained eyes.

8. pernicity — rapidity, celerity

Jubal then assembled the portable altar with a pernicity that would have been amazing in a much younger man, and which was simply staggering in a man of his threescore and ten years.

9. phallophoric — bearing or displaying a phallus

Whether the phallophoric processions of the Dionysian cult of this era was part of a dedication to generative principles or merely a badge of libertinage and excess, is a question much debated by historians and philologists.

10. coble — flat-bottomed fishing boat with lugsail used in salmon fishing in Scotland and North England

We placed the leather satchel in the aft of our coble and returned to the mossy rocks to see if any further evidence could be found.

Bonus Vocabulary

(military)

cheval-de-frise — portable obstacle of wood or iron shaped like a larger toy ‘jack’, used to stop cavalry charges or otherwise impede military movements; spikes or glass embedded into the top of a wall

On our inspection tour we found where the intruder had entered the grounds, noting the damaged and missing chevaux-de-frise along the top of the wall, though at the time we could not tell whether this was the result of the burglar’s actions or a consequence of some earlier event.

1. scantling — small piece of wood, usu. used for studs etc.; blocks of wood of a given size; [nautical] framing timber of a vessel

Finally we found the missing doubloon, covered in pitch and hidden in the scantlings just aft of the bilge.

2. pygarg — food animal, perhaps a species of antelope

Among the clean animals permitted as food mentioned in Deuteronomy is the hapax legomenon pygarg, commonly thought to be the addax of the Sahara.

3. chatoyant — of changing luster or color; of jewelry cut so that a streak of light is reflected

The shimmering silky nothing she was wearing seemed either greenish or opalescent or transparent, though the girl’s creamy figure was never quite seen through the chatoyant material, no matter the light.

4. acatalepsy — incomprehensibility, Skeptic teaching that only partial perception or plausible conceptions of truth are possible

Strangely enough, the pyrrhonic Skeptics teaching of absolute acatalepsy was co-opted by the rich and the powerful to undercut the idea of social change, thus becoming a tool of the most unphilosophical elements of civilization.

5. arras — rich tapestry; hanging screen of such

Behind the arras was a small alcove in which a pair of rusting swords had been forgotten.

6. speak — [nautical] to communicate with at sea through semaphore or sound

The last record we have of the Red Locust is from either the fifth or sixth day of March, when the jaunty schooner spoke a Swedish collier in the North Sea.

7. ablution — washing of the hands, face, etc.

After my morning ablutions were complete I selected my cleanest collar and cuffs and prepared to beard the lion in his own den.

8. ablation — removal; loss of surface (as of rocks or a glacier) through erosion or other natural process

The question thus becomes to what extent the ablation of mores and customary niceties by market forces may lead to an entire absence of any moral center in our daily lives.

9. melodeon — small wind organ; small accordion

Though the parlor lacked a piano, Betsy did have a jolly melodeon upon which to practice her musical wiles.

10. dour — sullen; stern

In all the twenty and seven summers I knew that crotchety old man, I never saw even a sliver of a smile cross his dour face, except this one time I’m telling you about now.

Bonus Vocabulary

(trains)

blind baggage — railway postal car with no door on the end, usu. just behind the tender; riding the rails unseen by trainyard bulls

We had found a gondola and were riding blind baggage across the plain when the crow landed beside us, intrigued by our grub.