Educated Guesswork

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.

1. geas — magically inflicted obligation

I must leave you now, for my bowels have cast a geas upon me, and I must away to the bathroom to fulfill its terrible duty.

2. precentor — one who leads choir or congregation in singing

Everyone has noticed the much-diminished vigor of the choir since Simon Tapwell became precentor, and his own mumbling and stumbling solos do little to inspire or even maintain the faith.

3. bougie — thin flexible instrument for insertion or dilation of bodily passages

As I now understand it they intend to insert a bougie in order to relieve the pressure inside the bladder, though if this fails it may become necessary to perform a very dangerous operation.

4. charpoy — Indian bedstead using rope or tape netting

Chandler laid the documents carefully upon the blue weave of the charpoy beneath the wall lantern, so that we could all see the damning evidence of Major Deveril’s treasonous perfidy.

5. nipperkin — liquid measure amounting from a third to a half pint

Solemnly he poured Rodney a nipperkin of the rich port, and together they toasted the king.

6. subfusc — dusky, somber

Barely any light seemed to escape from the subfusc mining town, and even the children at play were singularly sullen.

7. demirep — demimondaine, woman of doubtful chastity

Behind the army came the usual hangers-on of a pillaging force, the sharpers and ‘shiners, the panderers and demireps, the purchasers of stolen gold and purveyors of stolen virtue.

8. diaphoretic — inducing perspiration

McCarthy’s aversion to communists often had a diaphoretic effect upon the senator, especially in the face of any criticism.

9. poniard — small dagger

His hand went instinctively to his left hip, but Sir Lowell grasped only an empty sheath, as he had left his poniard with the Master of the Outer Chamber before his audience with the king.

10. forritsome — [Scots] impudent, forward

She’s a forritsome lass with red hair and a temper to match.

Bonus Vocabulary

(idiomatic, from delay in old firearms between triggering and ignition)

hanging fire — delayed, undecided

The final decisions of the Mice Commission are still hanging fire, and it is greatly feared that once again the cat will get away scot free.

1. recruit — to refresh, to reinvigorate, to restore the health of

Perry has gone with Aunt Emily to the island estate, where the beautiful grounds and pleasant clime will, D.V., recruit his mind and spirit, so addled by the frights he saw in the late unpleasantness.

2. biotope — region of ecological uniformity supporting specific grouping of plants and animals

The 1970s saw a movement to purchase and protect less traditionally ‘beautiful’ biotopes, which is one reason these tide pools and swamps are still preserved today.

3. jack-pudding — buffoon, merry-andrew

I am weary of all these jugglers and jack-puddings who attend every mountebank with the most outlandish poses and postures, and yet you would have me make obeisance to these knaves as if they were true men.

4. idiolect — the peculiar speech patterns of an individual

He affected—or perhaps it had become ingrained by the time I met him—an idiolect which married near obsolete phrasings of the long ago with a faux scientific mien, and he was the only gentleman whom I ever heard actually say the word “Harrumph!” in everyday speech.

5. asperse — to bespatter with false accusations; to slander, to traduce

That one of such vile reputation and sordid history should attempt to asperse my own actions and motivations with these base canards is a double affront.

6. ecod — mild oath (variant of ‘egad’)

“Ecod, man, would you rather I left you to the mercies of the Duke’s men?”

7. volary — large bird cage, aviary

Where you see a beautiful manor, I see a gilded volary where you and I and all such free spirits would be confined and imprisoned forevermore.

8. glad eye — friendly or flirtatious glance

Though she spoke only to my client, I noticed her giving me the glad eye whenever she looked my way.

9. hypertrophy — excessive growth or development

Samuel’s addiction to texting has resulted in severe hypertrophy of the thumb and first two fingers on his right hand.

10. mephitic — foul-smelling; noxious

From the darkened room wafted a repulsive mephitic wave of almost visible odor, as if all the dampest gym socks in the world had strangled each other in a sordid suicide pact upon a mound of rotting boiled cabbage.

Bonus Vocabulary

(British informal)

dosser — homeless person

He walked with that servile shuffle you see in many dossers, an attempt to avoid the pains and sores caused by wearing the same pair of shoes twenty-four hours a day, every day.