Friday Vocabulary

1. plonker — [UK slang] fool; penis; [outdated] item of unusually large size or girth “He’s nice enough to his friends, I suppose, but he’s a right plonker with the ladies.”   2. Dannert wire — concertina wire, coiled barbed or razor wire The village had shown their preparedness by removing all the street and …

Friday Vocabulary

1. pants — [UK slang] terrible, of bad quality “I don’t care if the whole village go there, it’s always been a pants pub with watery beer.”   2. dietrologia — [Italian] conspiracy theory, science of discerning hidden motives behind events Everyone knew he’d been fired for stealing from the till, but Ben’s commitment to …

Friday Vocabulary

1. shandrydan — hooded chaise; old ramshackle two-wheeled horse carriage or cart Now I heard the creaking axel of the pastor’s shandrydan and knew we’d been betrayed, for there was no other reason Mr. Goodfellow would be riding down this lonely stretch of path at this ungodly hour of night.   2. polysomnogram — multi-valued …

Friday Vocabulary

1. dysphoria — state of feeling bad or unhappy, malaise The marketing team finished their presentation on moving the Overton Window of dysphoria so that people at least didn’t feel so bad about feeling bad, but nobody in the room felt any better about the plan.   2. punnet — small basket for selling strawberries …

Friday Vocabulary

1. foment — to incite, to encourage; to apply heat or ointment to (body part) After the splint has been removed, foment the limb at least twice daily.   2. mugfaker — [obsolete slang] street photographer We contacted all the mugfakers within three blocks of the boardwalk to see if they might have taken a …

Friday Vocabulary

1. nous — mind, reason; common sense “Use your nous, Shelly!” the captain said, “Place the pickets up on the ridge, not the tents!”   2. mesclun — salad of mixed young greens The agency claimed that a pre-packaged mesclun mix was implicated in the outbreak, but this was denied by the distributor.   3. …

Friday Vocabulary

1. balestra (also ballestra) — [fencing] leap towards opponent with an immediate lunge Dimitrios closed the distance with a balestra feint to the sword arm shoulder, followed by an imbroccata to the chest, and Gregorio was hard-pressed to keep the Greek from ending the fight then and there.   2. pediophobia — fear of dolls …