Educated Guesswork

1. calipee — food delicacy made from fatty substance immediately above lower shell of a tortoise

Besides a fine stew, I was invited to enjoy the calipee, my first experience with this delectable treat.

 

2. pastophore (also pastophorous) — lower priest of ancient Egypt charged with keeping the door of the temple

If this reading be credited, this lonely pastophore was quite content in his role, feeding and caring for the holy birds used in temple rites.

 

3. peristyle — [architecture] row of columns around a yard or buiding; yard within such a colonnade

Within the central peristyle formed by sixteen columns stands a marble fountain depicting either the rape of Leda or some darker fantasy of the artist.

 

4. terebinth — tree of the Mediterranean region noted for its longevity and turpentine

Eusebius himself saw this famous terebinth still living late in the fourth century of the Common Era.

 

5. ad libitum — [Latin] as much as one wishes, without restriction, ‘according to pleasure’

Breadsticks ad libitum turned out to be much safer for Olive Garden than the endless shrimp which put paid to Red Lobster.

 

6. photism — luminous hallucination

But each phrase, sentence, each word of that fateful letter seemed imbued to MacReady with a shining tinge of light, a photism of great import that surrounded each letter of her message as he read the words her beautiful hand had impressed upon the ragged edge paper.

 

7. imprescripible — absolute, incapable of being taken away by law

Thus the close of the 18th Century found lawyers and philosophers alike fixated upon defining rights in this negative sense, drawing up lists of these imprescriptable rights and qualities, rather than setting their shoulders to the proper task of law, prescribing limits and procedures for legal actions.

 

8. fellah — peasant, worker, or farmer of Egypt or North Africa

The ox was followed by the inevitable fellah holding the arms of the wooden plow just as his father and his father’s had done since time immemorial.

 

9. fathomer — [nautical] sailor assigned duty of sounding depth

The fathomer sounded out “By the mark, six” in the silence of the night and the hushed crew.

 

10. lapstone — [archaic] stone placed in lap against which shoemaker beat and stretched leather

The pensive cordwainer now stretched the dyed goatskin by hand against his lapstone, manipulating it into its final shape for these most precious boots.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(idiom)

beggar’s lice (also beggar’s-lice, beggars’-lice, beggar lice) — any of many plants which deposit sticky bits onto clothes

I usually didn’t mind the beggar’s lice you got when rutching through bushes and brambles to avoid the main paths, but this time I’d gotten some piece stuck on my sock just at my inside ankle and it made every step a pain, but I couldn’t see any clearing where I could take my shoe off to get at it, and besides, I’d just get more stuck to me before I got through this underbrush and away from Sheriff Parker.

 

1. Flemish horse — [nautical] extra footrope along yardarm

As he clutched to the foremast yardarm with his fearsome thighs, his feet comfortably standing on the Flemish horse, Logan spied the telltale spume of their prey.

 

2. darbies — [British slang] handcuffs

Somers had somehow slipped his darbies, and now he held a pistol in either hand and demanded we unlock the door.

 

3. lout — [archaic] to bow, to stoop

And as he louted so, his eyes fixed upon the stones, I made a sign to Lance to prepare for action.

 

4. intarsia — elaborate Italian form of marquetry; decorative yarnwork using multiple colors of yarn

X-rays revealed the device hidden beneath the intarsia panel of the cabinet.

 

5. ophthalmia — eye inflammation, esp. conjunctivitis

Morning spit used to be thought beneficial for relief of ophthalmia, though nowadays you’re more likely to be prescribed eyedrops.

 

6. bilboquet — child’s toy consisting of stick with cup and attached string; game using such toy where player attempts to catch the ball in the cup of the toy

Beneath the eaves of the restaurant were painted scenes of mysterious women engaged in nonsensical activities: a milkmaid changing a tire, a medieval lady retrieving a cellphone from her maunches, an Asian beauty reading the newspaper while playing with a bilboquet with her other hand, and a jogger shooting bolts from her mirrored sunglasses at hexawinged insects.

 

7. vair — [heraldry] regular tesselated cup-shaped design in alternating colors, usu. blue and white (‘argent’); fur of a white-bellied squirrel used often in medieval times for trimmings of coats, etc.

I stared jealously at the gorgeous vair lining of his riding cloak, coveting its warmth even as I resented its owner.

 

8. inenarrable — inexpressible, unable to be described, not narratable

I retain a memory of the weather, the setting sun and the slight breeze through the trees, and seem even to recall a slow cicada’s cry and my own pulsing heartbeat, but only the sense of the experience remains to me, profound and life changing (as you shall see), though the inenarrable details and even so obvious a fact as just how I ended up sitting in the wet grass with the bird in my trembling hand elude me now and I think eluded me even at that long ago moment of piercing significance.

 

9. transpicuous — transparent, easily understood

Welton stood in the transpicuous shade of the elms, the dappled light making his knowing smile more friendly, if that were possible.

 

10. fard — to apply makeup, to paint one’s face

She had so farded herself as to resemble no woman ever I saw, and I could scarcely recognize my lovely Jessie beneath the deep slathered layers of clownlike colors.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(British & Australian slang)

play silly beggars (euphemistic form of play silly buggers) — to fool around, to engage in stupid or rash behavior

“Okay, now, man,” the constable said, not unkindly, “but that’s no reason to play silly beggars and end up in gaol for disturbing the peace.”

 

1. naff — [British colloquial] vulgar, tasteless

She wore some naff green and yellow stretch pants which rather emphasised just those portions of her anatomy which she should have downplayed.

 

2. draw — [slang] marijuana; bag of cannabis

We all figured Tammy turned a blind eye to the draw, just as she had to the incident with the plowblade and the ball bearings, but eventually we decided she was just ignorant.

 

3. congress gaiters — ankle boots with elastic on sides

Those boots I bought at that Alabama store took me all over the foothills and moors of England, but my absolute favorite pair of shoes were those very chic congress gaiters I picked up for a song while out for a stroll on a Saturday morning after I’d first moved to Spotsylvania.

 

4. cut the cackle — [British idiom] stop messing about (and move on to serious matters)

“Well, I’m sure we’re all very interested in Miss Peavsney’s latest woes with her snake farm, but it’s time to cut the cackle and figure out what we’re going to do about the damage to the roof of the vicarage.”

 

5. eftsoons — [archaic] soon after

The peal of the bell began to fade, eftsoons he turned the earth with his spade.

 

6. apical — of or related to an apex

Unbeknownst to we three smiling lads, this was the apical moment of the company’s history, and soon the indictments and injunctions, the backbiting and accusations, the lawyers and the prosecutors, every force in the universe it would seem would seek to tear us down and apart, as indeed those forces and our own unconquerable greed did in fact do.

 

7. eximinous — [obsolete] noteworthy, excellent

While we awaited the judgment of that eximinous personage we distracted ourseves with several hands of euchre.

 

8. perscrutation — penetrating and minute inquiry

The subject of his perscrutation had been the original architecture of the old manor house and its environs, and this explained (as best anyone could explain such a useless and academic madness) Beverill’s sojourn among the outbuildings, armed only with his transit, plumb, and compass.

 

9. discobolus — discus thrower; statue of same

Even the most untrained eye can perceive that the head of the discobolus is not the work of the same artist who carved the remainder of the statue.

 

10. cozenage — scam, fraud; practice of cheating

So beware the practitioners of cozenage, certainly, but not so rigidly that you flee all society and adventure.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(British idiom)

more power to your elbow — expressing approval of someone’s actions and hopes for their continued success

“But he’s not drunk a pint since his Mam was taken to hospital—more power to his elbow—though it’s anyone’s guess as to how long he’ll be able to keep on the water wagon.”

 

1. blue — [slang] to squander, to spend wastefully or without restraint

Of course he blued the whole hundred grand within a matter of months, and came back to me hat in hand looking for a handout to help him cover his rent.

 

2. craic — [Irish] fun, good time, esp. in pleasant company and conversation

“No, man, you don’t have to drink if you don’t want to, just come for the craic!”

 

3. henotheism — worship of single god while countenancing other deities

Are these pleas to a god called just ‘God’ in Aripostrophes’ prayers, as Ludwice believed, a form of henotheism followed by the Greek dramatist, or merely a rhetorical device—as is thought by many modern scholars?

 

4. hot gospel — [British] of a church or preacher where services have an emotional or frothy bent, esp. of an evangelical denomination

Pearson had grown up in the hot gospel churches of the American South, so our more sedate C of E services must have seemed quite dull to his mind, if not veritably soporific.

 

5. TDA — car theft, “Taking and Driving Away”

“You’re gonna charge me with TDA when she told me it was okay to take the car?”

 

6. garum — wildly popular fish sauce in Ancient Rome

Why was garum so popular, then, if it indued the food with such a fetid odor of decay?

 

7. crise de foie — [French] indigestion, “upset liver”

Such an enormous repast was bound to cause a crise de foie after the meal, if not right after the oyster starters, so I paced myself accordingly, only sampling lightly from each of the dishes, being sure to wash it all down well with the fine wine.

 

8. crise de foi — [French] internal religious tumult, “crisis of faith”

His endless months of captivity had apparently induced a sort of crise de foi upon his return, though not because of the strange beliefs of his captors but rather some sort of internal schism caused by his many hours spent in weary contemplation.

 

9. navvy — [British] manual laborer, esp. on construction project

“It’s simply a matter of aptness; a navvy can hardly have time to study Seneca and Epictetus, so tired is he from his work in the evening, and so the music hall and gin are perfectly suited to his needs and abilities.”

 

10. erubescent — blushing, red or reddish; rubescent

The fine old nose upon which I had seen the housefly alight lo those many years ago was now become an angry erubescent proboscis due to his constant sneezing and repeated blowing and wiping and massaging of that now intractable rhinal appendage.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(British informal, from the phrase “It’s as much as my job’s worth” (to do some thing))

jobsworth — worker or official using their petty authority unhelpfully and refusing to make accommodations for particular cases

But the meter maid was a nasty little jobsworth who declaimed that ten seconds was the same as ten hours as far as she was concerned.

 

Bonus Bonus Vocabulary

(Latin, from “verbum sapienti sat est” [“a word is enough to the wise”])

verbum sap (also verb. sap., verbum sat, or verbum sapienti) — enough, no more need be said (used to indicate that further discussion would we unwise, unwarranted, or unnecessary)

It becomes obvious that all these ‘reasons’ have to do with money, rather than the underlying principle, so I’ll say no more. Verbum sap.

 

1. cruentate — [obsolete] blood-smeared

But it was not in that fetid fly-filled room with its cruentate walls of horror that the worst nightmare was to be found, but inside the antiseptically clean closet at the back, within the tiny floor safe set into the dark linoleum.

 

2. nocent — noxious, harmful; not innocent

And so the better to pursue his nocent purposes he covered his garb with a dark leathern cloak and put on a wide-brimmed hat.

 

3. in posse — [Latin] potentially (as contrasted with actually)

Though this edict was bemoaned as, in posse, severely restricting the investment opportunities and freedoms of the richer classes, in practice the law was applied only to the most wretched of individuals.

 

4. abgeschmackt — [German] tasteless, vulgar

Such fervent melodrama now seems merely abgeschmackt burlesque to we moderns, like the guignol theater of fin-de-siècle Paris, though in its time it moved apparently both the most tender hearts and the most jaded spirits with its poignant tales of missed opportunities and derring-do.

 

5. fetlock — joint on horses between the hoof and the knee or hock; fur tuft growing at this joint

Garrick rode his horse sweating into the river up to its fetlocks, letting her drink the water so that I feared he might founder her.

 

6. acidulate — to make sour; to acidify

The flight of her lover made Grantha less demure and more forward, acidulating her tongue so that her sardonic wit became famous all along the Old West Road.

 

7. circular insanity — [obsolete] outdated term for manic-depressive disorder

The discoverer of what was then called ‘circular insanity‘ had to endure accusations of plagiarism until his death in 1870, though the record clearly shows the priority of his claim.

 

8. ferrididdle — [Southern] chipmunk, red ground squirrel

A ferrididdle had entered the tent through the poorly secured flap and was quite contentedly munching away at the peanuts Farrow had secreted in his backpack.

 

9. areology — study of the planet Mars

At the time these results were believed to be the biggest advance in areology since Lowell’s confirmation of the martian canals detected by Schiaparelli.

 

10. snib — [Scots or Australian] to latch

Jerry snibbed the screen door even though it was so warped that it hardly could keep out small rodents, let alone the insects that already plagued the rude cabin.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(slang)

brunser — male homosexual, esp. younger partner of a pair

There was some talk that he was Bobby’s brunser, but not a lot to his face after he knifed Freddy in the gut.

 

1. scribatiousness (also scribaciousness) — quality of writing excessively

Finally we decided that the only cure for Artur’s scribatiousness was to take away all of his electronic devices and leave him solely with pen and paper—which was not a cure per se, but since no person other than Artur could read his handwriting, at least we were saved the bother of trying to keep up with his over-prolix logorrhea.

 

2. disanalogy — inaptness or lack of analogy between two things; failure of an analogy

Of course, the disanalogy between the circulatory system and American freeways becomes even clearer when one considers that—I mean, good Lord, have you driven on the roads recently?

 

3. glede — hot coal or ember

In my hand I felt it burn like a glede and would have dropped it had not Noreto warned me of its ability to cause dissociative sensations when touched.

 

4. kermis (also kirmess) — fair or festival

Her booth at the kermis was attractively decorated, so many passersby stopped to view her luxury seasoned almond oils and extracts.

 

5. tombola — raffle or lottery at which winning tickets are drawn from a rotating drum; such a drum

Inside the tombola Pritchett was surprised to espy a patch of double-sided tape, which an unscrupulous person—such as Edgar—might have used to ‘fix’ the results of the raffle.

 

6. speccy — [British slang] derogatory descriptor of one wearing glasses

“Why do I have to make allowances for some speccy bastard who can’t be bothered to read the brochure before the boat gets underway?”

 

7. sparrow-fart (also sparrowfart and sparrow fart) — [British idiom] sunrise, dawn, very early in the day; useless person or thing

I had training that day so had to rise before sparrow-fart to get to the other side of town on time.

 

8. maenadic (also mænadic) — frenzied, of or related to a maenad

And thus Gibbons fell victim to his own hubris, destroyed by the very maenadic devotees he had debauched for this vile orgiastic defiance of all common decency.

 

9. parti pris — [French] preconceived notion or attitude, bias

At this time in his career as a young junior executive on the rise, he was so much a prisoner of his own partis pris that trying to get Reggie to entertain a new idea was like teaching a lizard to appreciate Erik Satie.

 

10. landaulet — early automobile style having a small passenger compartment and an open area behind the windshield for the chauffeur

Though Sir Jennings had given us the loan of his landaulet, the large package with which we were encumbered made our seating arrangements quite uncomfortable, Peter being somewhat loath to let our prize out of his sight.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(slang, from the film Fatal Attraction)

bunny boiler — vengeful former partner after being spurned, usu. of a woman

Eventually Chip moved to the Florida Keys to escape this bunny boiler who kept showing up at his home and work and standing outside restaurants even when he was dining alone.

 

1. pace — [Latin] “in peace”, with no offense intended to, with apologies to

Certainly we can all be grateful to Max Brod (pace Kafka’s own wishes in the matter) that he did not cast these writings into the fire.

 

2. Monel (also Monel metal) — alloy of nickel and copper

But its strength at high temperatures led to the use of Monel in both the frame and the skin of the hypersonic X-15.

 

3. Keeley Cure — supposed cure for alcoholism of the Keeley Institute at the cusp of the 20th Century, primarily consisting of injections of auric chloride

Of course it made sense that these shots of gold worked to counteract the shots of whiskey I’d been drinking, and I had every hope that the Keeley Cure would work for me as it had worked for thousands of other poor (in a moral sense) unfortunates.

 

4. MOT — [British] Ministry of Transport (now the Department of Transport) test of a vehicle’s safety and roadworthiness

“We both know this car isn’t going to pass its MOT, don’t we, even without that broken taillight?”

 

5. out at elbows (also out at elbow) — poorly dressed, shabby; needy, poor

The only inhabitant of the shop was a crabbed, out at elbows fellow who at first I mistook for an indigent seller of trifles hoping to interest the owner in some oddments he wished to sell, so I was surprised to learn that he was the owner of the bric-a-brac shop, with all its trifles, oddments, and whatnot.

 

6. typewriter — [slang] submachine gun (esp. a Thompson submachine gun)

Once again I had to duck as typewriter bullets flew overhead; at least I wasn’t standing calf-deep in mud this time.

 

7. all my eye and Betty Martin — [idiom] balderdash, nonsense

“He said that?!? What all my eye and Betty Martin! And you believed him!?! Saints preserve us!”

 

8. stap me vitals (also stap my vitals, or in abbreviated form as stap me) — [slang] exclamation of anger or surprise

“Well, stap me vitals if you don’t show up when you’re least wanted, Teddy!”

 

9. on the tapis (also upon the tapis) — [idiom] under consideration, up for discussion

The last thing on the tapis was the same old nonsense about the Founder’s Fountain, only under a new guise and disguised as a patriotic means of showing our support for the troops.

 

10. brass neck — [UK idiom] shamelessness, gall; person with this quality

I don’t mind being told that AI will provide cost savings and more efficiency, just don’t have the brass neck to tell me that those benefits are for the customer, rather than for the penny-pinching executives in their glass-walled offices.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(military slang, originally from ANZAC troops)

chocolate soldier — soldier who never sees combat; one unwilling to fight

He was too yellow even for the quartermaster corps, too much a chocolate soldier to face up even to harsh words or forms in triplicate.

 

1. muzzy — blurry, fuzzy, unfocused; confused, dazed; drunk, mentally impaired due to alcohol

Fernando shook his head—which was a mistake—to try to focus on what Jess was saying, and finally got it through his muzzy head that his roommate was shouting something about the apartment being on fire.

 

2. mouchard — [French] nark, police spy

Evard didn’t go to prison, however, and all the quiet dark men in the bars mused that he had become Captain Ranoch’s latest mouchard.

 

3. prepossession — opinion, bias, prejudice (esp. in a favorable sense)

These nervous tics made it impossible for his superiors to form that prepossession without which advancement in the bureau was almost impossible, especially to one who had graduated from Alabama.

 

4. teetotum — small finger-spun top, such as a dreidel

Like a wobbling teetotum the young toddler finally collapsed after all his spinning about, though I was unable to read the character inscribed upon his panting, smiling visage.

 

5. rampallian — vulgar person, wretch

“So you’ve taken your place among the tavern rampallians and have found your true level at last.”

 

6. star-crossed — ill fated, doomed by the stars

Thorne was to play a crucial role at the end of this sad farce, but the star-crossed clerk would find that his vigorous actions were as detrimental to his high hopes as had been his quiescent hesitations of the previous weeks.

 

7. legendry — legends in a collective sense, mythologies

Of the common tales told throughout these diverse peoples from the Kazakh plains to the Mountains of the Moon, no figure of legendry seems to suffer quite so sad a fate as does the Frog Boy, along with his partner in crime (in most versions), the Moping Mouse.

 

8. depreciate — to lose value; to belittle

However, inflation had depreciated the value of these fixed returns, and Jeremiah found himself having to expend his principal.

 

9. deprecate — to express disapproval of; to belittle; to cease support for

“I don’t mean to deprecate Tomas in your eyes, Emily, but it seems that the new version is even worse than the one who was sent off to prison.”

 

10. attar — essential oil made from flowers, esp. from roses

Just as three thousand flowers are needful to make one small vial of attar, so have I distilled the blessed memories of a wonderful life into these few pages.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(Scots)

dowp (also doup) — buttocks; butt end of a cigarette

Aye, he made a fine figure of a man now, poking through the rubbish with his fingers, searching for a dowp or two so he could have a smoke, him who’d once bought his Cuban cigars by the box.