1. peltry — pelts collectively Such families of Indians—bedraggled, half-starving, and bone weary from their threadbare existence at the edge of merest survival—supplied in their thousands the peltry for one of Europe’s most important streams of commerce. 2. aluminium — [British] aluminum In fact, aluminium is quite widespread; the difficulty is extracting the valuable …
Tag Archives: bonus word
Friday Vocabulary
1. depilate — to remove hair from, “to make bare of hair” [OED] Josun had originally depilated his arms and legs because of the bicycle racing; now, however, it had become something of an obsession. 2. arrack — liquor made from fermented sap of palm or cane or fermented rice, typically distilled in India …
Friday Vocabulary
1. pyx — small container for holding the consecrated bread of the Eucharist; [rare] box The tiny, decorative boxes so enamored of by modern collectors hearken back to the enameled pyxides of the famous Limoges workshops, regularly made there since the 13th Century. 2. teal — small dabbling duck from which the mallard evolved …
Friday Vocabulary
1. knobkerrie (also knobkerry) — short wooden club with heavy knob at its head used by South African tribes The similarities between the knobkerrie and the shillelagh go further than the merely physical, however, as both were banned by the ‘powers-that-were’. 2. futtock shroud — [nautical] lines securing platform attached to mast by running …
Friday Vocabulary
1. bittacle — [obsolete] binnacle, box on ship’s deck for the compass Be sure to use wooden pegs or the like in constructing the bittacle, for metal nails can attract the compass. 2. barney — [British] fight, quarrel, brawl Terence spent the night in jail after getting into a barney with some other drunken …
Friday Vocabulary
1. remise — second fencing thrust made after failure of the first; coach house Well, in for a dollar in for a pound, as they say, and since my lunge had left me in an exposed position I essayed a remise under the decorative spaulder of the sneering French lord, changing his expression in a …
Friday Vocabulary
1. allotropic — existing (of an element) in multiple physical forms Carbon is rightfully known for both the multitude and the variety of its allotropic forms, which include diamonds, graphite, charcoal, glassy carbon, and even such modern derivations as buckyballs and nanotubes. 2. exiguous — scanty, meager The physician’s actual treatment was so exiguous …
Friday Vocabulary
1. incorporeity — quality of being incorporeal, lack of material existence Proofs of the incorporeity of his supposed evidence only seem to have confirmed in him an almost mystical credence in the tyrant’s lies. 2. circumverbalistic — of the design or creation of crossword puzzles; of the solving of crossword puzzles Braithwaithe proved the …
Friday Vocabulary
1. paleography — study of writing and the evolution of writing systems You should not be led by the failure of paleography to divine an unanswerable argument for Hand D in the Sir Thomas More manuscript as Shakepeare’s to conclude that the science has no basis in fact, as it has shown many and storied …
Friday Vocabulary
1. spathe — large bract enclosing the flower bundle or spadix of some plants The beautiful white flower of the peace lily is actually the spathe of the plant, which encloses the yellow spadix of the true flowers. 2. purdah — curtain screening women from sight of men or strangers; system of secluding women …