Educated Guesswork

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 below the top to the mast itself

Jake’s experience hauling himself up the futtock shrouds stood him in good stead as he hauled himself up the overhanging cornice to rescue the mewling kitten.

3. lucerne — alfalfa

We walked through fields of lucerne towards the cliffside village, the fragrant crop contrasting with the salt spray of the ocean breezes.

4. crab — [falconry] (of a hunting hawk) to claw or to fight with another hawk, rather than the intended prey

But then she spied Sir Percy’s bird and they crabbed at once, plummeting to the earth as they fought.

5. pertinacious — stubbornly or persistently holding to a purpose, opinion, or plan

Your pertinacious zeal may have served you on the playing fields, sir, but your present contumacy will lead only to your eventual loss.

6. whinge — [British] to whine, to complain

It’s always the toughest blokes that whinge the most about having to do chores around camp.

7. bumboat — small boat selling provisions or wares to ships in port or offshore

All the sailors knew just which bumboat would sell them liquor on the sly, though the officers remained entirely ignorant.

8. tineman — night officer of the forest in medieval England

Nobody really expects any better from a lazy tineman than to stay quietly in his shelter until sunup, so we were surprised to hear Archibald’s booming voice ordering us to stop.

9. impecunious — penniless, poor

The former titan of industry is now an impecunious dry goods merchant, struggling to make ends meet where once he left five dollar steaks half eaten upon his plate.

10. anisotropy — difference in the value of a substance’s properties along different axes

The strength of pressboard is needed where the anisotropy of most woods might lead to breakage along the lines of grain.

Bonus Vocabulary

(fashion, late 19th Century to 1970s)

liberty bodice — sleeveless bodice originally created as a less constrictive alternative to corsets

In addition to providing warmth during the chilly English winters, a child’s liberty bodice with its cotton strapping was supposed to develop good posture.

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 louts and thus he has an alibi for the murder.

3. ninnyhammer — fool, simpleton

If he seems a mighty Solomon, it is solely because he surrounds himself with such ninnyhammers as to make his every phrase appear genius in stark comparison to the drivel about him.

4. scarify — to make scratches or light incisions (as in vaccination); to wound, to make sore; to make cuts in the bark of a tree

The duo finally made it through the brambles surrounding the top, Kris’s shins and calves so thoroughly scarified that Devon felt glad he had worn long jeans even on such a hot day.

5. surd — irrational number (esp. a root); voiceless consonant; [obsolete] deaf; stupid

But try as he will, the student will find he is left with an irreducible surd, namely the root of 2, just that number at the heart of the occult mysticism of the Pythagoreans and the cause of the murder of Hippasus.

6. vizard — [archaic] mask, visor

Dame Whitby affects a vizard, not to hew to the latest fashion, but to hide the marks of the pox upon her cheek and brow.

7. lumber — to encumber, to obstruct or heap

Dusty albums and boxes of old photographs lumbered the bottom shelves, making the books thereupon almost inaccessible.

8. university — [obsolete] totality, entirety; the universe

They are wrong, he taught, who speak of this or that animal as being “bad” or “evil”, for the university of life comes from the Creator of all things, of Whose creation there is nothing which is not good, which does not redound to His glory.

9. pettifogger — inferior legal practitioner, esp. one who cavils and engages in questionable acts; any petty practitioner

I doubt that he was any worse than any of the other pettifoggers who pervaded Congress during that dark time in our history, but he was cursed beyond his fellows with an absolute and irredeemable lack of humor.

10. exogamous — of or practicing the custom of marriage only outside one’s clan, tribe, or group

Pinkie shocked his Eton classmates when he not only married outside his class but pushed this exogamous predilection so far as to marry an American.

Bonus Vocabulary

(business formal, legal)

of even date — of the same date

This letter is in response to your inquiry of even date regarding our ability to supply you with thirteen tons of cotton balls.

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 nonce.

2. remise — [law] to release, to surrender (any claim, etc.); to put back, to convert again

Such joy as the family had when they learned that Sir Ewen had remised his soul to almighty God was palliated somewhat by the speed with which the Deity asserted His claim.

3. ankylose — to stiffen, join, or fuse together two originally distinct bones, or bone and another substance (such as a tooth)

The phalanges of his middle toe had become ankylosed due to his distressing (to him, I’m sure) habit of breaking that particular toe almost every summer.

4. natheless — [archaic] nevertheless

Well you ken that your guardian is my own foresworn enemy, natheless I shall see you safely through this dismal wood, if it be in my power.

5. ontic — noumenal, of the real rather than phenomenal

The last bastions of atomist philosophy seem to have fallen under the persuasive ontic presence of quantum entanglement, forever putting paid to the idea that the observer does not affect that which is observed.

6. fascia — [British] automobile dashboard

The panoply of dials and buttons and levers and other gewgaws on the burl wood fascia made it almost impossible to determine our rate of speed.

7. whatnot — stand with shelves for displaying small items; non-specified thing

The visitor’s attention was drawn irresistibly to the dark wooden whatnot in the corner where stood an astonishing array of toys, figures, tchotchkes, and whatnot acquired from a lifetime of eating nothing but Happy Meals for lunch.

8. scuppernong — muscadine grape variety native to North Carolina; wine made from this grape

For the adults, a little scuppernong was added to the syllabub.

9. lurdan — sluggard, lazy person

Dane was always a loutish lurdan, lording it over his betters as if being born into a rich family were a worthy accomplishment.

10. prosector — dissector of dead bodies, as for anatomical research or autopsy

When the gross examination was performed by the prosector it was immediately obvious that Mrs. Cartwright’s doctor had erred when he claimed she had an enlarged heart.

Bonus Vocabulary

(British)

dosh — money, cash

You know as well as I do that he doesn’t make enough dosh to afford the new car he’s driving around town.

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 that it nearly qualified as homeopathy, though his fees seemed inversely proportional.

3. educe — to bring out, to elicit; to infer

He was a canny prosecutor, and rarely failed to educe just the answer he was looking for from his witnesses.

4. panga — large machete-like knife used in East and South Africa

We now turn to the days of the so-called ‘Kenya Emergency’, when fear of the Mau Mau pangas ruled the night.

5. tutelary — of or related to a guardian or guardianship

Under the care of his supposedly tutelary older brother, Ashton was allowed to do almost as he pleased.

6. trainband — civilian militia company of London and other areas, during Stuart rule and after

Jack had missed them while he was abroad, his stolid compatriots forming their trainbands or meeting in the coffee houses, working in the fields and shops, or sitting in the pews of a Sunday.

7. lambrequin — woven covering for a knight’s helmet; decorative drapery placed over door or window

Like much of medieval panoply, the lambrequin degraded from its initial functional purpose—protection of the helmet from rust and heat, in this case—to an almost merely decorative accoutrement, coming to resemble nothing so much as a gaily colored quoit worn over the head like the imagined crown of a silly child.

8. cinereous — of or related to ashes; ash-colored

An ill-advised attempt at a jig led to an inebrious stumble against the mantle which propelled the urn containing dear Uncle Roberts to the marble floor, and there among the cinereous rubble lay the ornate missing key.

9. coruscate — to scintillate, to sparkle

Though there were times when his conversation would coruscate with flashes of wit, for the most part his speech was of a leaden dullness which left his listeners in a tiresome gloom.

10. fauces — arched cavity at back of mouth leading to the pharynx

If you don’t have burned toast or such suitable material, simply tickling the fauces with a finger or a feather will often elicit the desired emetic response.

Bonus Vocabulary

(old U.S. military slang)

canned willie — corned beef in a can, corned beef hash

“I know what I’ll do when I first get home,” he mused, “I’m going straight to the most expensive restaurant in Omaha and ordering the biggest steak they’ve got—very rare—with baked potato and mushrooms … and I’ll never eat canned willie again for the rest of my life.”

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 full extent of his cruciverbalistic skills during the Cold War, when he used his weekly puzzle in the Sunday paper to send covert messages to his masters in the Kremlin, a fact that was only discovered by a fellow crosswords aficionado who spotted the coded messages in the clues.

3. knacker — [British] one who buys carcasses or slaughters useless livestock for a rendering works

All my dreams are exhausted, and I’m about ready to consign them to the knacker’s yard so that I can just get on with my life.

4. chautauqua — assembly for social education and entertainment, originally held in Chautauqua, New York each summer in late 19th and early 20th centuries

The Prosperity Gospel preachers and their (slightly) more profane counterparts can trace their lineage back to the wildly popular chautauquas of Middle America and such stirring speeches as the “Acres of Diamonds” of Reverend Conwell.

5. ravin — [archaic] to seek plunder or prey, to eat voraciously; act of plundering or seizing food

Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil.

[Genesis 49:27 (KJV)]

6. swinge — [archaic] to flog, to thrash, to punish

“I’ll swinge you good and proper if you don’t come here this instant, boy!”

7. swingeing — large, great, severe, extreme

All the voters in this region suffer from swingeing cuts in services while job losses are mounting ever higher.

8. verst — Russian measure of length equal to about two-thirds of a mile

The state of the road was so bad that it was possible only to ride for two versts, three at the most, before we became mired in the mud once more and had to disembark to manhandle the car out of the ooze.

9. mammer — [obsolete] to stammer, to mutter; to hesitate, to vacillate

Now he stands mammering where once he spoke forthrightly; thus has one misstep left him bereft of all boldness.

10. ligate — to tie up, to bind with a ligature

After you have filled the casing, ligate the sausage using a butcher’s knot for hanging in the drying room.

Bonus Vocabulary

(British)

lamping — hunting at night using lights

To some extent the prey may be startled by the bright lights, or even may sit motionless staring into the beam, but the predominant appeal to the weak hunter who prefers lamping is the fact that many animals’ eyes shine brightly at night when artificial light hits them, making the beasts easier prey.

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 successes in tracing the development of writing over time.

2. emesis — vomiting

We simply cannot eat in that room at the Varsity, for the merest glance at that network induces near instant emesis in my cousin.

3. biltong — sun-dried strips of lean meat

After the stampede we camped for two days while Jens and Henrik made biltong from the unfortunate beasts.

4. ear — [archaic] to plow

Useless was it to ear, for all that we planted was destroyed by the marching armies long before the time to reap.

5. yobbo — [British slang] yob, young lout

But when she had her attack, and was lying almost in the gutter in her tweed coat, it weren’t the sharp-dressed man of affairs who stopped to help her, but some loud yobbo, apparently on his way back from a fight if the cut above his eye was any indication, who ran to her side and called for help and stayed with her until the ambulance arrived.

6. fissiparous — reproducing by fission

The strange Canadian sect was merely another product of the long and sometimes tortured process of fissiparous Protestant evolution.

7. devoir — duty of civility or respect (usu. pl.)

Ginny and I went out with our laden baskets to pay our devoirs to the aged women of the church, noble in their own way, I suppose.

8. djellabah (also djellaba, gallabiah, galabia) — loose hooded cloak worn by both sexes in the Maghreb

Vanessa peered out from the hood of Tahar’s djellabah, looking like a small child in the voluminous brown and grey robes.

9. detrition — abrading, wearing away by rubbing

The very stairs themselves were depressed somewhat in the center by the centuries of steady detrition by the sandaled feet of the worshipful monks.

10. steelyard — weighing balance with unequal arms

Having a long history, even the common scale once universal in doctor’s offices is merely a variant of the useful steelyard.

Bonus Vocabulary

(idiom)

chandelier bid — underhanded auction technique whereby auctioneer pretends to notice a (nonexistent) bid from a distant part of the room so as to start the bidding at a higher figure than otherwise might occur

Although chandelier bids are not technically illegal, and are, indeed, even mentioned—usually as ‘bids on behalf of the consignor’—in the auction materials, several states have recently tried to introduce legislation forbidding the practice.

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 from same; state of seclusion

Every time I visited the aging lawyer I found his daughter—or was she his ward?—was closeted in her room during the entire time I was at that wonderful mansion, until I began to wonder whether her seeming purdah was self-imposed or was the diktat of the master of the house, who, after all, had spent many years in his youth among the Hindoos.

3. factitious — artificially made; not spontaneous

One might be easily impressed by splendor of his domicile, but upon closer inspection one sees the factitious beauty of his garden with its artfully splayed Astroturf and potted plants, and one notes that the oaken desk of this would-be monarch is a resplendent veneer, and that his office chairs are gilded pressboard seats from Ikea.

4. monoceros — [obsolete] unicorn; one-horned fish

Some Europeans supposed the rhinoceros to be the fabled monoceros of legend, though its huge plates of hide and its overall dissimilarity to the fabled horselike creature dissuaded them quickly.

5. pug — animal footprint

Boldly laid out across the dusty clearing were the pugs of the tiger, so great his insolent pride that he disdained even to walk upon the nearby grass and so conceal his sign.

6. fustian — coarse fabric of cotton and flax

The long skirts of my russet fustian coat caught the grass as in a fisherman’s sieve as we strode across the glade.

7. wangle — to manipulate, to bring about in an indirect or underhanded way; to induce another (to do something)

Healey wangled an invitation to the Founders’ Ball in hopes of accosting the former Senator.

8. lugubriously — mournfully

Tomas lugubriously sighed at our recommendation and nodded his head as he admitted that perhaps this would be the best plan from among the poor options available to us.

9. scarper — [British] to run off

“Well, now, it seems that Mr. Merton has scarpered with Josie, leaving all those boxes behind, and I suspect me that she never was his daughter.”

10. cresset — metal vessel containing oil, grease, rope in pitch, or other flammable material, used for lighting and usually mounted upon a pole

The large vaulted cellar was poorly lit by a smoking cresset mounted to the wall by the stairs, and we could hardly make out the far wall.

Bonus Vocabulary

(Latin)

locum tenens — temporary replacement for permanent employee, esp. for doctor or clergymen

Gerry had become so adept at managing every role in the department, and worked so well with the chief, that he had become a sort of unofficial locum tenens whenever one of the superintendents or upper administrators went on vacation or had to take extended leave.