Educated Guesswork

1. bolt — [botany] to change rapidly from growing primarily leaves to produce instead seeds and flowers

Spinach plants will bolt in hot weather conditions, leaving a plant with a very bitter taste (if it does not become entirely inedible).

2. verge — rod or staff carried as badge of office

You can see the first duke in the portrait which still hangs above the library fireplace, with his determined gaze beneath his coronet and cap, the verge of gold in his hands, and at his feet a pair of lurchers seeming almost small beneath his looming presence.

3. belletrist — writer of artistic and literary criticism

Chesterton was always better as belletrist than as novelist.

4. biro — [British] ballpoint pen

Thad slid a biro across the desk and silently pointed to the document awaiting my signature.

5. hemidemisemiquaver — sixty-fourth note

Nobody can really be expected to play a hemidemisemiquaver on the trumpet, and I’m pretty sure he only put those in the music so he could say the word over and over.

6. carbuncle — severe subcutaneous abscess; red sore on nose or face caused by drinking; red or fiery gem

I had been warned not to believe Darnton when the carbuncle on his nose glowed, though I quickly realized that when the former priest was in his cups he would say almost anything.

7. inchoate — incipient, not yet fully formed, unordered

Almost at once the inchoate republic was beset by troubles both external and internal.

8. viridescent — greenish

The surface of the muddy river was tinged with a viridescent glow caused, no doubt, by the efflorescence of algae.

9. pelagic — of or relating to the open sea, oceanic

So successful were these first pelagic fishing expeditions that the exploration of the inner forest was postponed for several years.

10. jocund — merry, cheerful, blithe

Slowly the jocund wedding party made their way down the path to the dappled grove.

1. molinary — of or related to the grinding of corn

But the crows quickly resumed their post in the old tree, and the old woman resumed her molinary exertions at the metate.

2. amain — at full force, violently; at full speed

Their chargers coursed amain down the slight declivity and fell upon the Saracen foe like a river in flood.

3. shandy — drink made up of beer and lemonade

If a woman must drink, she should imbibe something appropriate to her nature, such as a shandy or its ancestor the shandygaff.

4. reresupper — meal of lavish nature taken after usual evening supper

Besides second breakfasts the colonel was accustomed to append a reresupper to his daily meals whenever his old cavalry comrades came to stay at the mansion.

5. scall — eczema

And this compound will be found a useful treatment for scurf, scall, and similar uncleannesses of the head.

6. cacodemon — evil spirit; [obsolete] nightmare

Though some felt Mr. Tobert under the baleful sway of a cacodemon, his actions were in general so ludicrous and so harmless that most thought them caused by a more secular derangement of the senses.

7. sprat — small fish of the herring family; small thing of little consequence

Around this time, a trifling sprat of political consciousness broke out among some of the rank-and-file, quickly squelched by the union leaders.

8. fossick — to search for gold in abandoned diggings; to hunt about

While they fossick for the clues we’ve already found, we’ll be enjoying our new life in South America.

9. skerry — sea-rock covered during high tide, reef

Though the skerry looked ominous, its crags were no danger to our small skiff while the tide was out, though a larger craft would have been imperiled.

10. tow — shorter fibers of flax separated from the longer more useful strands

When Birnie knocked over the oil lamp it fell upon his small bed and the blanket burned like tow, and the small room was quickly engulfed in flames.

1. tetrachromat — person who is able to perceive many more colors than usual due to a fourth type of cone cells in the retina

Only women can be born as tetrachromats, because the gene for red and green cones is on the X chromosome.

2. addle — to make (eggs) rotten

Though this scorching heat has addled all our eggs, our prize hen still insists upon sitting atop her ruined brood.

3. wale — ridge or mark upon the skin produced by lash or cane; raised line in fabric; gunwale; horizontal timbers used for bracing piles

Along the sloping rock face the cofferdam was supported by a frame of wales with diagonal struts.

4. allodial — of property held absolutely without rights accruing to a feudal superior

The ancient German law dictated that allodial estates could be inherited only by kindred.

5. sistrum — ancient Egyptian percussion instrument consisting of metal frame with transverse rods which rattled when shaken by the attached handle

The lament of the priestess was underlined by the shivering sistra and punctuated by the beating tambour.

6. flaw — sudden wind blast; brief gale or storm; abrupt outburst of feeling

The sloop was caught broadsides by the thundering flaw and the jibing boom struck Harrison, flinging him into the dark river before the crew noticed.

7. sudorific — related to or causing sweat; drug which causes perspiration

Though I knew better, having previous experience of this dingy restaurant, still I cast sense and caution aside and dipped my chips into the sudorific salsa in the tripod molcajete on the table.

8. blatherskite (also bletherskite, bletherskate) — speaker of arrant nonsense; such nonsense

Where once we placed our worst blatherskites in Congress where they could do no harm, now we give them television shows and pay heed to all of their flapdoodle as if it were holy writ.

9. bothy — small cottage or hut, usu. of only a single room

We repaired to a bothy that my guide knew of, to enjoy our first day’s catch and rest before returning to our angling.

10. venireman — person summoned as a potential juror

Seventy-two male and female veniremen were brought in for the voir dire, and it seemed at first that the number would be insufficient, so fixed was public opinion in the scandalous case.

1. pharyngitis — inflammation of the back of the throat

We were worried that her pharyngitis was a symptom of strep, but she only had a common cold.

2. gallinaceous — of the order of common poultry and game birds

For sheer tenacity you would be hard pressed to find a challenger to the cock quail, boldest of the gallinaceous birds.

3. impostume — purulent swelling, abscess; moral festering sore

Will we ever lance this impostume of homelessness that begins to crowd every city street and which seems a symptom of some dark and deep political malaise lurking beneath the veneer of our modern culture?

4. frounce — pleat or fold (of cloth)

She gathered the shelled nutmeats in a frounce of her skirt and poured them into the pot.

5. bilious — of or relating to bile or to excessive discharge of bile; cranky, choleric

Far from the bronzed youth I knew in my youth, I found Fellowes had become a dried up bilious old man, displeased with everything and everybody around him.

6. blithe — heedless; jocund, merry

He smiled and said, “Then we’ll just steal a taxicab” with that blithe assurance that made him such a hit at parties and in the boardroom, and which made him such a danger to society as a whole.

7. ouch — brooch, clasp, buckle; setting for precious stone

His rich green cloak was held by a large ouch of gold around his wide shoulders.

8. exoculation — putting out of an eye or eyes, blinding

The duke decreed that Lord Lindell should be condemned to exoculation, that the miscreant would never again set his sights so high, and as a warning to others to keep their gaze fixed upon their proper duties.

9. lammergeier (also (lammergeyer) — bearded vulture

I made out what our guide was pointing to in the sky: a lonely lammergeier sailing high above the stark cliffs searching for prey or—perhaps—keeping an eye upon our seemingly doomed caravan.

10. tweeny — auxiliary maidservant, assisting both the cook and housemaid

Well, we kept her for a while as a tweeny but you know the Sussex house really does not need so many servants, and besides, though it is awfully tragic, isn’t it, about her mother and all, well, one does have to step up and get on with life after all, don’t you think?

1. crepitus — grating noise produced by friction between bone and cartilage or pieces of broken bone; rale

As I slowly made my way up the stairs, each step with my right leg produced the crepitus from my knee that had been constant background music for the past five years, though usually unheard except at times such as these, when all the other blares and noises of the day finally subsided and into the silence came the creaking sigh of my weary patella.

2. alidade — sighting instrument used for measuring angles (both horizontal and vertical) from a fixed point

The fire towers of the great northwestern forests used simple alidades to triangulate and pinpoint the first signs of dangerous smoke.

3. poltroon — worthless coward, craven

“Are you such a poltroon as to stand idly by while braggart traitors despoil your heritage?”

4. squirearchal — of or related to the country’s landed gentry as a collective body; of or related to rule by squires

This tension between the king and parliament fixed firmly the squirearchal rule of the country gentlemen in the provinces, where tradition and economics both conspired to cement these sometimes pompous men firmly into their local seats of power.

5. ilex — holm oak, evergreen oak; holly

As we walked through the lovely groves of cypress and ilex, Barnaby informed me that these oaks had been grown from some of the first acorns ever brought to England.

6. effete — ineffectual and lacking vitality

Of the clutching of pearls by the effete devotees of the West Wing let us take no more notice.

7. weft — crosswise threads over and under which other threads (the warp) are drawn to make cloth or rugs

I felt an almost religious pang as I viewed my brother’s painting of our old natal home, whose stability and daily pleasures formed the weft upon which so many happy childhood memories were woven.

8. Arimaspian (also Arimaspi) — legendary single-eyed peoples of northern Scythia

Perhaps the one-eyed man is king among the blind, but as a two-eyed man among these modern Arimaspians I found myself singularly unexceptional.

9. goosander — [British] common merganser, a diving duck with a serrated bill

The wild brown fringe trailing behind the goosander‘s head reminded me of a punk singer I knew in West Oakland.

10. jillflirt (also gillflirt) — [archaic] wanton, giddy young girl

The dancing hall, a sweltering oven of coxcombs and jillflirts, can produce no fine delicacy from its overheated confines, but only an oleaginous joint of vice and concupiscence.

1. effulge — to shine forth, to brilliantly radiate

Jackson found himself hiding within his own shadow, his dark mood made darker by his rival’s brilliant smile, which effulged across the room as if to compete with the very sun streaming through the bay window.

2. mardy — [British] grumpy, sulky, moody

No matter how mardy Darcy got, her mother remained affable and upbeat.

3. allocution — formal or hortatory speech; pontifical address to secret consistory

Struggling mightily not to fidget, as I’d been told I was overfond of doing whenever my grandmother launched into one of her hours long allocutions on the correct way of behaving or acting or doing or not doing things, I found myself almost holding my breath as I attempted to restrain my boyish disdain and insouciance.

4. exonym — name for place or people or language used only by people not of that grouping

Once you know that ‘Allegmagne’ is the French exonym for Germany (itself our English exonym for the German ‘Deutschland’), the Spanish word ‘Alemania’ becomes obvious.

5. plat — to braid, to plait; to plan out, to sketch a map

But Toby sits quietly now, no longer the boisterous champion of the field and campus, content—perhaps?—merely to occupy his time with nothing more strenuous than platting another of the baskets that begin to fill the shelves of his ancestral manse.

6. saturnine — sluggish, gloomy, moody, cold; of lead, suffering or caused by lead poisoning

What events had given my once curly-haired and elfin friend these saturnine features I was never to learn, even after the usual inquest which follows an event such I am about to relate.

7. intercalary — inserted, esp. of a day, days, or month inserted into a calendar

Looking backwards, those frantic weeks of pleasure and excitement seemed merely an intercalary interlude within the slow and deadening descent of his life from cradle to the grave.

8. shirr — to poach or bake (eggs); to gather into parallel threads

Liza shirred our eggs in the same pan she’d made the johnnycake the night before, and placed them upon the two remaining squares of the cornmeal bread.

9. seiche — sudden perturbation or oscillation of the water surface of a lake or bay

The mountain lake was known by the locals to be subject to seiches, which the more modern latecomers to the area affirmed were caused by the sudden storms and clouds which would sometimes occur in the late summer, but which the old-timers wisely thought were the result of disgruntled trolls.

10. overparticular — fussy, very fastidious

I suppose that I am not overparticular about my wife’s friends, even of her friendship with that ‘bounder’ as you call him, perhaps because I trust my dear wife completely, and also, that bounder is my friend as well.