Educated Guesswork

1. screw — small amount (of a product) wrapped in a twist of paper; such a twist of paper

In the ragamuffin’s pocket (the one without the hole in it) were only two tarnished farthings, a screw of tobacco, and a piece of rough twine.

 

2. univocal — having only a single meaning, unambiguous

But they spoke truly in those times, meaning what they said, in univocal terms, not like today when even the simplest concepts have suddenly become subjects of great debate, and words mean little, if anything at all.

 

3. coistrel — knave, scoundrel

I would not be such a coistrel as to turn away my former patron at the hour of his greatest need.

 

4. buskin — half boot; thick-soled shoe worn by ancient Greek actors in tragedies, cothurnus; [fig.] tragedy, the style of tragedy

With a grandfather who had been one of the lights of Broadway, and his mother who had met his father-to-be while making the third in a series of maudlin movies destined for middle aged wives of the wealthy, Peter seemed born to the buskin.

 

5. dolman — long, open Turkish robe; woman’s mantle with cape-like sleeves

When she fell out of the carriage she had gotten some foliage caught in the beads upon the sleeve of her dolman, and now she sat by the fire carefully extracting every bit of vegetable matter.

 

6. milk-toast (also milk toast) — breakfast dish made of toasted bread in milk, often served with either salt or sugar

The best thing for an invalid is a small bowl of milk-toast, perhaps because it encourages the sufferer to quickly recover so that she can resume eating normal food.

 

7. egesta — excreted matter, esp. urine and feces

During the illness, the patient’s egesta must be collected and carefully measured, to ensure that further loss of body tissue does not occur.

 

8. tumbaga — gold and copper alloy used in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica

Revealed at last, the gleam of the tumbaga figurine peeked out from the plaster shell beneath which it had been hidden.

 

9. ephebe — young man; male citizen in ancient Greece between the ages of eighteen and twenty

These successful developers and grifters know well how to mobilize their armies of Kool-Aid drinking ephebes to quash any investigation into their reprehensible schemes.

 

10. ebriety — drunken state; habitual drunkeness

All five of those lads were found in such a condition of ebriety that I would be hard pressed to accept them as character witnesses.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(Latin)

hic jacet — epitaph, literally “here lies”

The work, though not physically onerous for most, did something to the soul, numbing the higher impulses and crushing the spirit until only a hic jacet was left in the eyes and faces of the men and women who had come to this travail with hopes and dreams of a better tomorrow.

1. heliograph — signaling device using mirrors to reflect flashes of sunlight; instrument for taking pictures of the sun

The gang hid out in this canyon fastness after each robbery, secure from the sheriff’s searchers, until Old Kentuck would signal them by heliograph that the coast was clear.

 

2. rootle — to dig with the snout

“It’s hopeless,” she cried. “Every time I get that dog groomed, he immediately runs out and rootles into the herb garden, undoing all my efforts.”

 

3. moribund — near death, dying; stagnant

As he waited in line at Starbucks with the team’s detailed order clenched tightly in his aching hand, Grant tried very hard not to ponder his moribund career and that fateful day at the pizza palace.

 

4. thimblerig — rigged game in which the mark is asked to guess under which cup the operator has hidden the pea, shell game

Once again the Democrats were invited to play thimblerig in their search for Republican votes supporting the bill.

 

5. lag — to send to prison; to capture, to apprehend

“Look, I want to lag this bastard as much as you do, but rushing about like querulous geese isn’t the way to do it.”

 

6. doctress — female doctor, female healer

The widow Mapes was known as a canny doctress, though whether her healing powers came from her potent potions or her persuasive tongue was a subject of some debate.

 

7. pile — sharp metal head of an arrow, dart, or lance; pointed stake driven into ground; [heraldry] wedge-shape charge upon escutcheon with point downwards

Inside the small outbuilding of charred bricks was a pile of brass piles, all that remained of the armory’s store of javelins.

 

8. inspan — [South Africa] to yoke (animals, esp. oxen) to a vehicle; to harness

He told Toby to inspan the cart before the Lieutenant had even finished his tea.

 

9. blackguard — to revile with scurrilous words

In spite of the fact that she had been blackguarded by every newspaper in London, I found the woman at the center of the case to be utterly charming and quite composed in the face of the scandalous charges.

 

10. lazaroidal — of or related to lepers

After the trial, we saw no more of Doctor Fasteau, though I heard a rumor that he had ensconced himself behind the walls of a lazaroidal enclave in South America.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(Geordie slang)

radgie — aggressive or violent person

We were going to the club but some radgie was screaming in the street outside so we just headed back home.

1. murrey — purple-red

Somehow the murrey lining made the black hood even darker.

 

2. dobbin — ordinary farm horse

The county fair has everything you might want, from fancy pickles to thrilling fancies, and if you want to take a flier on the dobbins, well, we’ve got that too.

 

3. matriculate — to admit to a college or university, to be enrolled in a college

Women were matriculated at Stanford University from its inception, though at one time Jane Stanford sought to limit their numbers.

 

4. barrack — to jeer at adversaries so as to discommode, to heckle boisterously opposing team

The official simply smiled during all of their insults, calmly refusing to continue his informational speech until the crowd ceased barracking.

 

5. mixtilinear — bounded or formed from lines of different types

A mixtilinear incircle is one of the three circles tangent to two of the sides of a triangle and also to the circle which encloses the triangle itself (its circumcircle).

 

6. varix — varicose vein

In fact, however, duodenal varices are a very rare cause of gastrointestinal bleeding, and are almost always a consequence of severe alcoholic cirrhosis.

 

7. guttle — to eat voraciously and greedily

Harvey will guttle broken glass if you fry it in lard and shower it with salt.

 

8. empery — absolute dominion

Humans have often dreamed of liberation from Death’s eternal empery, positing such disparate fantasies as brain implants into robots or reincarnation as butterflies.

 

9. durbar — public reception of Indian prince or high British official in India

For me the high point of the Khan’s durbar was the mass charge of his calvary, the thundering hooves for a short while silencing the inane chatter and useless gossip which is the bane of all such official parties.

 

10. pelerine — woman’s cape or mantle of lace or fur, usu. with ends forming a point in front

Helen habitually wore a light grey pelerine of lace whenever she left her house, perhaps as a badge of her spinster status.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(Latin)

noli me tangere — (lit. “touch me not”) thing or person which must not be touched; prohibition against interference; painting displaying Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene

In spite of his blank noli me tangere expression I bullied ahead, asking once again what he had been doing in his basement before I arrived.

1. artemon — square sail on a sharply steeved spar at the bow of ancient Roman or Greek merchant vessels and ships

Runners were sent forward to furl the artemon so that the master would have clear sight lines as the enemy ships rushed towards our prow.

 

2. vaward — [archaic] forefront; vanguard

The noblest captains of Christendom were in the vaward that day, doomed by the treacherous words of the blackest knave who ever walked those faraway lands.

 

3. wrack — destruction due to violence; ruin, catastrophic change for the worse; remnant left behind after destructive force

Suddenly as it had come the storm abated, and the full moon could just be seen through the cloud wrack on the horizon.

 

4. verderer — officer of the English king having charge of royal forests with especial duty to protect the trees and undergrowth and deer

The venison has grown scarce lately, and the king fears malfeasance by one or more of his verderers.

 

5. invidious — likely to incite ill will or odium; offensively prejudicial

Do not take the bait laid out by her invidious words, as any response at all give her yet another petty victory.

 

6. fug — stale, close air

“Land’s sakes, Jethro! At least allow me to open a window or two and clear the fug from your sickroom.”

 

7. panmixia — entirely random mating within a breeding population

Although panmixia brings mathematical comfort to genetics calculations, the concept is so obviously foreign to actually observed breeding habits of most higher animals that it stands as another example of that rational disdain for reality that too often provides the fuel for the engines of science.

 

8. maunch (also manche) — overly long dropped sleeve fashionable in 14th Century; [heraldry] stylized representation of such a sleeve used as armorial bearing

The maiden in her pale green gown held a single white lily in her right hand, and this color of purity was repeated in the lining of her maunch which opened in descent from her lovely arm for a full two feet.

 

9. currawong — medium-sized crowlike songbird of Australia

These wrens know well their enemies, and even the nestlings can recognize the sound of a currawong walking nearby.

 

10. lower (also lour) — to scowl or to frown, to appear sullen; to look dark and threatening (esp. of the sky)

Our guide met every protest we made with a lowering insolence.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(fashion)

Eton crop — severely short woman’s hairstyle of the late 1920s

Though worn by such icons as Josephine Baker, by 1930 the Eton crop was almost entirely passé, associated only with masculine lesbians.

1. maunder — to mumble, to talk idly, foolishly, or to no real purpose; to move about aimlessly

The poorly shaven hobo took another pull from the bottle and maundered more words about the family he once had, the son who had once been so proud of his father.

 

2. termagant — violent ill-tempered woman, virago

We all sat frigidly silent, stunned by the termagant‘s rude shouts when offered no soups to her liking.

 

3. mole — very large construction in water, as a pier, breakwater, or causeway

The inner harbor was formed and protected by a massive mole, made from the stones left over after the construction of the towering cathedral dominating the seaport.

 

4. portfire — handheld, slow-burning fuse for lighting artillery or fireworks

Obviously an electric igniter is best, but many fireworks still require flame to ignite and in those cases a portfire can be essential, providing the needed fire without the difficulty given by striking matches or a lighter.

 

5. desideratum — need or want, needed or desired thing

The company claimed that their robots would satisfy the two most urgent desiderata of the warehouse, safety and speed, at a cost much less than paying untrustworthy human workers.

 

6. eld — old age; olden times

Only his eyes seemed untouched by eld, scintillating still within their sunken, wrinkled sockets.

 

7. decompensate — to lose grip upon one’s own mental health, i.e., to go crazy

And then the psychiatric resident stopped by my hospital room to make sure I hadn’t decompensated during the ordeal with my nares.

 

8. flirt — sudden jerk, quick throw

With a violent flirt of her fan Bessie declared that she would rather drop dead than ever see that man again.

 

9. lairage — resting place for cattle on their way to slaughter

We five witnesses were ensconced in quite a nice downtown hotel, a gilded lairage before the grand jury met on the morrow.

 

10. brigandine — body armor consisting of iron rings or plates sewn onto, and sometimes within, fabric coverings

The brigandine of the Duke’s personal guard was dyed a rich cerulean blue, making our own functional hauberks look shabby in comparison.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(British)

St. Martin’s summer — unseasonable warm November weather

With hearts gladdened by the strident sun of our St. Martin’s summer, the dark and depressing clouds from Belgium seemed an insupportable burden.

1. longanimity — patient suffering, forbearance

Still, his mother showed such great longanimity during his endless travails that all the neighbors wondered that such a saint had borne such a son.

 

2. recondite — abstruse, uncommonly profound; little known, obscure

Though I spent several years waiting upon the professor, hearkening to his every word, sitting at his feet hoping to obtain some small portion of his recondite wisdom, I look back upon those times now and realize that I must have been stark, raving mad.

 

3. munity — bestowed privilege

Do not denigrate the social munities which are vouchsafed to you by your current status and position; they can be taken away as quickly as they were granted.

 

4. overlearn — to learn or memorize more than needed for existing use

On the other hand, the Ebbinghaus curve of forgetting suggests that overlearning does have a purpose beyond merely deadening the spirit with mindless repetition ad infinitum.

 

5. buncombe (less common, though the original, spelling of bunkum) — humbug, claptrap; mere speechifying

Naylor’s newfound fascination with scientific mixtures for hog feed is just more buncombe, another effort to make a profit off the current worries of his constituents.

 

6. flitch — side of bacon; square of whale blubber; halibut steak; lengthwise cut plank of wood

My old Westie’s happiest day was when he found the refrigerator door wide open and chowed down an entire flitch of bacon before anyone noticed the theft.

 

7. durance — imprisonment; [obsolete] duration; endurance

And while your ears were held in durance by his monotonous words of little meaning, you failed to notice that his eyes were speaking an entirely different sort of message to your own wife.

 

8. snorter — [slang] rip-roarer, remarkable thing; one who snorts

“Have you ridden yet in Ned’s Italo-Suiza? What a snorter!”

 

9. fornenst — next to; facing

I placed the poker fornenst the stool, so that it would be ready at hand no matter which way the conversation went.

 

10. hidage — [obsolete] medieval tax upon land

Infamous for the four hidages he levied upon each plough land, all was forgiven when his foreign wars finally met with great success.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(Irish idiom)

on foot of — because of

He was discharged from the post on foot of previous allegations (later proven) of malfeasance whilst fundraising for the United Charities.

1. corvine — of or related to a crow or crows

The so-called detective pranced around the debris remaining in the street with ungainly, corvine hops, examining each little pile of trash as if it would give up the very secrets of the universe if he simply stared at it strongly enough.

 

2. palter — [archaic] to equivocate or to lie; to mumble

Do not palter about your own deeply held beliefs, but rather sound out strongly your true feelings in the matter, or else keep entirely silent.

 

3. exordium — beginning, introductory matter to a treatise, disquisition, etc.

The dry matter of his actual discourse did not live up to our high hopes, raised as they were by the rubicund speaker’s delightful exordium.

 

4. droschky (also droshky) — Russian four-wheeled open carriage

The prince invited father and I to ride in his droschky, but having seen him racing his charger through the streets of the city, I declined.

 

5. aleatory — unpredictable, random, depending upon the throw of a die

Gonard’s success as an economist depends upon two things: his correct aleatory predictions of market trends, and his ability to make others ignore his concomitant incorrect predictions.

 

6. valiance — bravery; deed of valor

We three were the only witnesses to Ewart’s selfless valiance and we knew even then that nobody would ever believe the tale.

 

7. distrain — [law] to compel performance of some obligation by seizure of good, etc.

Joey’s collection of Pokémon cards had been distrained for non-payment of rent.

 

8. cosset — to fondle, pamper; pet lamb

Father never cosseted us when we were growing up, though he did give us a new pair of bootlaces every Christmas.

 

9. severy — vaulted roof between two arches

The ceilings of each severy in the transept had been painted with fanciful astronomical signs, as if we stood beneath the vault of heaven rather than a vault of stone.

 

10. dubbin — product used for conditioning leather

Every Friday night as we headed for the bus into town, he could be found sitting on his bunk, rubbing dubbin into his boots, in the forlorn hope that next week perhaps he could escape the wrath of Sgt. Ross.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(slang)

stemwinder — invigorating speech, esp. rousing political oration

Without notes or pause the old campaigner launched into a veritable stemwinder of a speech, the best it has been this reporter’s pleasure to hear in many a year.

1. marplot — one who defeats or spoils a plot or design by meddling or officious intrusion

Strangely enough, Pierre Boulle’s The Bridge Over The River Kwai, in which Colonel Nicholson plays the marplot to the commandos’ efforts to strike against Japanese supply lines, is based to some extent on the experiences of the author during the war both as a prisoner and as a commando.

 

2. stochastic — randomly determined, of models of random observations having statistical consistency; [obsolete] of or related to conjecture

Though the company prided itself on its proprietary search processes based on stochastic observations, users found it difficult to navigate the web site.

 

3. collodion — solution of gun-cotton in ether, used in photography and surgery

The old hound’s injured paws were healed by the vet with a mixture of flexible collodion.

 

4. tester — bed canopy; canopy suspended above an important personage

Lying atop the feather down comforter, I noticed a strange indentation in the sheer tester above the bed, which proved to be made by the missing key.

 

5. butty — [British idiom] buttered bread; sandwich

But me Mam always knew how to cheer us up, bringing warm milk and sugar butties to me room where I sat sulking.

 

(the below entry was discovered to be a duplicate of a word previously used in 2019)
hebdomadal — weekly

Jackson put the figures and books into his usual duffel before going to bed, so upon awakening he could immediately hit the road to Sam’s house for the gang’s hebdomadal gaming session.

 

6. maslin (also meslin)— rye mixed with wheat; mixed grains

Hearty rousset bread was made from meslin and was usually destined to sop up broth or soup.

 

7. phocine — of or related to seals

I thought I’d gotten away with it, had made it past the mother seal without arousing either her suspicion or the rest of her brood, but then I felt upon my Achilles’ tendon the sharp snap of her phocine teeth.

 

8. toque — small cap or bonnet; small brimless hat or hat with narrow brim, worn by women; [Canadian] knitted cap, often with pom-pom on the crown

Everyone threw their hats into the ring, except for one toque over the line.

 

9. trichotillomania — mental disorder in which the sufferer undergoes strong urges to pull out his or her hair

Though several potential medications are being studied, the primary treatment for trichotillomania is therapeutic, particularly behavioral therapy.

 

10. equivoque — double meaning word or expression, pun; ambiguous speech

Startled by her sudden appearance at my door, I fell back upon equivoque, telling Sally, “I couldn’t be more pleased to see you.”

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(mining)

high grading — crime of keeping better quality ores from mine owner for one’s own enrichment

He had done a stint at Folsom for high grading back when he was just twenty-five years old, and he was still bitter three decades later.