1. barracoon — temporary holding place for prisoners, esp. slaves
The king wished to drive the emigrants away from Port Cresson so that the barracoon could be reopened and his lucrative trade in human souls could recommence.
2. caftan (also kaftan) — loose-fitting, full-length garment with long wide sleeves, worn throughout the Middle East, the Maghreb, and parts of Asia
The landlord met us at the door wearing an expensive periwinkle caftan with rich brocade, though Agatha pointed out to me later that the hem had been repaired many times, and that the material was thin at spots due to repeated washings.
3. conn (also con) — to steer a ship or sailing vessel
You’ll have need of a man very familiar with these islands to conn your craft through the treacherous reefs to the hidden inlet where they’ve beached the Rockaway Beech to repair their damage from the storm.
4. con — (obsolete) to know, to understand
But the best I can say of William Tinker is that though he neither cons his craft nor has innate skill, still he is quite persevering in his ignorant attempts to fashion useful tools.
5. acclivity — rising slope
Before Bernhard’s forces grouped in the oaks along the river’s edge rose a gentle acclivity to the treeless ridge.
6. stews — brothel, brothels, neighborhood in which brothels predominate
The taverns, playhouses, and the stews are his natural element, and I doubt much that this nouveau ‘Lord’ will fare well beneath the cutting eyes and biting tongues of the gentlemen and women of the court.
7. huggle — (obsolete) to hug
Just as a mother huggles her newborn to her breast, so did Dylan hold the mewling kitten in his arms.
8. periphrastic — overly wordy, circumlocutory, characterized by use of many words for a single word or a shorter phrase
Though the document was boldly stamped across its face ‘Not A Bill’, I struggled in vain through the periphrastic prose to determine just what this seemingly official paper actually was.
9. doxology — short formula of words in praise of God
Pieter was the loveliest, kindest man I ever met, and every word he uttered seemed to me a doxology, full of joy and never an ounce of rancor.
10. bittern — wading bird related to, though smaller than, the heron
Suddenly the boom of a bittern seeking a mate startled me out of my twilight reverie on the dock.
1. draegerman — specially trained miner who is expert in underground rescue
The boisterous draegermen, still prideful after their success at the Slewton Slide, kept teasing the old miner at the end of the bar.
2. ted — to spread out or to strew for drying
As the orange sun cast its parting rays upon the newly mown field where the tedded hay still lay ready for gathering on the morrow, Bealiah wondered how his sister could ever think of leaving their heavenly homestead.
3. rhombencephalon — hindbrain
The student will soon discover that the separate parts of the rhombencephalon are not always easily distinguishable when working with lizard brains.
4. absquatulate — to flee, to abscond, to leave hurriedly or secretly
The plan was simplicity itself, though only such backwoods fools would give money to complete strangers and not expect them to absquatulate the moment their purses were full of the local specie.
5. pantophobic — fearful of everything
As easy as it might be to lapse into a pantophobic nihilistic despair, we must resist the urge and pick ourselves up each day, steeling ourselves for the evil which sometimes seems much more than sufficient for any twenty-four hour time period.
6. gaylord (also gaylord box) — large and rugged cardboard box for shipping and storage
At the end of almost a full week of intensive work we accumulated over fifteen gaylords of recyclable material extracted from the tumbledown woods behind the once beautiful mansion.
7. morse — (archaic) walrus
The oldest among them, a weather-beaten man whom all the others living in these rude huts assured us was the fiercest hunter of morse, declared emphatically that the morse had no horn at all upon its brow, though he allowed that the sea beast had very dangerous tusks and teeth.
8. arpent — old French unit of area roughly equal to an acre, still used in Francophone America
The sons were no wiser than Descaux père, fighting endlessly over a dozen worthless arpents of swampland while the lawyer’s fees ate away both the profit and the capital of the old sugar plantation.
9. adversion — (obsolete) attention
Just as when our mind’s eye in a dream begins to wake the moment we focus our adversion upon the peculiar narrative of the dream, so has she lost interest in each suitor from the time she first deigns to notice him and his plaint.
10. cosher — to feast; to pamper
Many a vassal finds his stores insufficient for the winter after the lord of the manor comes to cosher for a long weekend’s hunt.
Bonus Vocabulary
(grammar)
sentence adverb — adverb modifying entire content of a sentence
Though debates still burble about whether ‘hopefully’ is acceptable as a sentence adverb, the wisest course whenever considering a sentence adverb is this: Don’t.
1. penetralia — innermost part (esp. of a temple); most secret or private parts
We rushed into her well-appointed toilette, and found her already dying, lying in the very penetralia of her boudoir before a beautiful Art Nouveau vanity, a tortoise-shell brush still clutched tightly in her hand.
2. chary — wary, shy, sparing, choosy
Benjamin has become much more chary of his time since Mrs. Betanthorp roped him into that charity event as an auctioneer.
3. cinchonism — quinine poisoning
Though Pete Le Gevre had the characteristic headache and deafness associated with cinchonism, we missed the confirming tinnitus because he had had that symptom for years due to his work backstage at The Angry Ratchet.
4. gentilitial — of or related to a particular people, country, or nation; belonging to family or kin
Though they continued to enjoy their gentilitial privileges for some more decades, the actual power had decisively shifted to the stewards who maintained the regency despite the opposition of the Queen Mother.
5. firk — to move suddenly, to be lively; (obsolete) to cheat
And on a beautiful spring night the lads and the lasses all would firk it beneath the ancient oak almost unto the sun’s rising, missing only the music to make it a dance.
6. micturition — the act of urinating
In almost all cultures standard taboos exist around the acts of micturition and defecation, so the research party was doubly startled by what they discovered upon the island.
7. dysuria — painful or difficult urination
What should have been a pleasurable relief was made a fiendish hell by the demon of dysuria.
8. shirty — ill-tempered
Enright was a shirty little thug who’d flunked out of reform school before his thirteenth birthday, but he possessed the native cunning of all cornered rodentia.
I quickly realized another advantage of traveling with an obscenely wealthy companion, as all of our luggage and other impedimenta were made the sole concern of several of Roger’s numerous staff, and he and I were free to saunter about the city completely unencumbered.
Bonus Vocabulary
(British slang)
cop off — to have sex with (someone)
While I were locked up my best friend was copping off my best girl, with me none the wiser.
The Lies That Bind, by Kate Carlisle (A Bibliophile Mystery, #3 in the series)
Kate Carlisle is no Raymond Chandler, and her book—The Lies That Bind—is an affront to his project of raising mystery fiction to the level of literature. If anything, the author of this, the third in the series of so-called ‘Bibliophile Mysteries’, has lowered the standards of literary detection to that of the most vanilla romance novel, wherein the girl gets the man in spite of the seeming obstacles, which in this case means that two murders and as many brutal assaults are merely McGuffins to distract us from the foregone conclusion of ‘Will She or Won’t She?’ She will, though any steamy action will take place offstage or in the reader’s imagination, which is hopefully more fecund and more suasive than that of our author.
Alice kept turning and bucking, fighting to get Minka off her back, but it was like trying to remove a giant tick. Minka wasn’t letting go.
Girl-on-girl action turns into mere horseplay through poor wordplay
Ms. Carlisle’s crimes against the written word are many, but most have been reclassified as mere misdemeanors in the post-PC age, where typos are ascribed to thumb typing and grammatical mistakes are blamed upon autocorrect. Perhaps better editing might have averted some of the most galling errors, but the same may be said of today’s most literary and literate works; editors long ago were deemed non-essential personnel, and vanished and almost forgotten is the heyday of the formidable editors who trained and shaped rough writers into greatness—titans such as Max Perkins and Joan Kahn. But the flaws are many, and the only thing that stands out in her novel is the shallowness of her descriptions, characters, and plot.
This was only the second evening of class but the group was already beginning to meld nicely. As everyone worked, the personalities of some of the students rose to the fore. I’d like to think we were all getting used to each other’s quirks and foibles, but some were more easy to acclimate to than others.
Cynthia and Tom, for instance, tended to bicker quietly over almost anything. The subject matter could be as trivial as the choice of covers for the books they were making. ….
Gina and Whitney liked to talk, too, but at least they were entertaining. Both were pop-culture fanatics and proud of it. They told me what they’d seen on TMZ the previous night; then Gina showed everyone the GoFugYourself.com app on her phone. Kylie and Marianne both begged to see the latest red-carpet disasters.
Mitchell was a jovial man, cheerful and interested in the others’ lives. Dale, Bobby, and Jennifer, on the other hand, worked quietly and kept to themselves.
When Alice wasn’t texting her boyfriend, Stuart, or rushing off to the bathroom, she would absently rub her stomach while she worked. Fortunately, she was blessed with a self-deprecating sense of humor, so most of the students found her charming, despite her health issues.
Personalities, quirks, and foibles—Oh, My!
Kate Carlisle, or at least her narrator, the inharmoniously named Brooklyn Wainwright evince a boutique view of reality. (Do not worry, dear reader, there will be an explanation, a lengthy explanation, for that unusual and ‘kicky’ name.) In this worldview, apparently formed by attending gallery openings and purchasing the handiwork of one’s friends, every craft shop opening is a triumph, a splendid success for creative types who never need worry about supply chains and customer service, nor fret over upcoming rent payments after weeks of empty showrooms populated only by occasional ‘Just looking’ customers and the sullen teen watching the cash register whenever she is not watching her phone. Add to these scenes the fact that the action (if one may call it that) in this novel (ditto) is set in San Francisco, where the only thing higher than the rents are the … no, nothing is higher than the rents in San Francisco. Which makes most of our cute cast of characters like the cast of Friends, living far beyond any visible means of support.
Like many San Francisco neighborhoods, South Park was a mix of chic and charm with a hint of scruffiness around the edges.
Brooklyn knows the charm of the bourgeoisie
Not that the San Francisco of this book is recognizable to anyone who ever lived in The City. Save for a chilly night breeze on the opening page, the weather in this fictional SF is always beautiful, with clear blue skies compared to a painting by François Boucher. Though our protagonist lives in a South of Market factory converted into apartments, with the obligatory lesbian neighbors (sculptors) and the gay couple (chef and hairdresser), she has the understanding of a tourist when it comes to the 49 square miles of San Francisco. For instance, she revels in driving down Lombard Street to clear her head, which has the opposite effect for most SF residents and is done only under extreme duress imposed by visiting family. She parks her car in Union Square to go to Chinatown (which I suppose is one way to avoid the homeless in the ten blocks or so between her apartment and Dragon’s Gate), where she rhapsodizes over the butcher shops in the first two blocks “into the heart of Chinatown”. Um, no.
We walked along the narrow sidewalk, past electronics stores and teahouses and jewelry shops filled with ivory, jade, and amber and thousands of rainbow-colored strands of beads. Souvenir shops hawked every conceivable tchotchke known to man, from ornately beaded silk slippers and wallets in every color to wooden back scratchers, articulated wooden snakes, kites of every shape and size, willowy bird cages, Chinoiserie teapots, jewelry boxes, and delicate eggs on wooden pedestals.
Butcher shops displayed rows of cooked ducks hanging from metal racks, drying in the breeze. Baby bok choy, snow peas, and ruffle-leafed Chinese cabbage filled the vegetable stands in front of the markets. I breathed in the scents of fried wontons and sweet sausage buns and wanted to eat everything I could smell.
Two blocks into the heart of Chinatown, we found the address on Mr. Soo’s business card.
Pro tip for writers doing research online: the meat and produce markets in Chinatown are on the opposite end of Grant Avenue from the Union Square entrance
But this superficial understanding of San Francisco is no great crime. Heck, Steve McQueen in Bullitt managed to find a shortcut from Bernal Heights to Ghirardelli Square which in no way detracted from the best movie car chase of all time. No, it is more the unrelenting nature of the shallowness, the banality of the feeble, which casts this book into a literary black hole from which no interest can escape. Even the putative subject of our bookbinder-cum-detective is described in language better suited for an in-flight magazine than for a narration purporting to describe the narrator’s true vocation and passion. The only passion given to any subject in The Lies That Bind comes when Brooklyn rhapsodizes over food or wine, and even that is not allowed to come between the trite set pieces of ‘action’ and the pallid description and characterization which make up the bulk of this ‘novel’.
I swallowed the bite and almost swooned. The buttery ravioli sauce was extraordinary. “Oh, my. I need a moment.”
“It’s rather good, isn’t it?”
As good as it gets, at any rate
But again, none of this rises to the level of felonious abuse of literary license (though the incessant petty infractions of bad writing might call for a hefty fine). Of course her love interest is a suave British former secret service agent, and of course her female bêtes noires are all vile harpies. And naturally Brooklyn herself has as parents a couple of Deadheads who now live on a Sonoma commune run by Guru Bob (I’m not kidding) where the quondam hippies are now all winery millionaires. And though her ‘intuitive’ mother is now learning Wicca, yet cannot remember whether to do “the banishment spell during the full moon or the waxing moon”, such trivial characterization still constitutes no great crime against reading humanity.
And I was not even considering penning another of my futile jeremiads against bad writing whilst struggling to ignore the completely ridiculous plot point around which much of this book supposedly turns. To wit: central to this ‘mystery’ is a rare almost first edition of Oliver Twist, lovingly restored by the protagonist and expert bookbinder, Brooklyn Wainwright. Our narrator is pressured by one of the evil harpies mentioned above not to divulge to prospective buyers that the volume she had brought to scintillating life is not the true first edition, which was not published under Charles Dickens’s name, but under his journalistic pseudonym, ‘Boz’. The restored book, however, has Dickens listed as the author as well as slightly different illustrations, making the volume not worth the tens of thousands it will fetch eventually in the seedy black book market this novel claims to exist. Where to begin? First off, anybody buying this Dickens novel would know exactly what points to look for in a true first edition. Secondly, any amount of restoration to a rare book, no matter how small, drastically decreases its value to a collector (and yes, they can tell)—and this book was given to Brooklyn “in tattered pieces”. And finally—and here we leave the confines of the novel and take a quick glance at the Interwebs, already available when this novel was published in 2010—the Oliver Twist first edition was issued in 3 volumes, meaning that the ‘book’ that drives so much of the plot isn’t even half of the needed McGuffin the author wants it to be. (By the way, you can find very nice copies of the true first edition online for around $10,000 if you’re in the market.)
“Another dead body?” I cried, having officially reached the end of my rope. “What the hell is going on with me? Was I a serial killer in a past life? Why do I keep finding dead people?”
Enough already.
“I agree it’s all become a bit chary,” Derek confessed as he struggled to keep the bookcase suspended.
“Chary? I hope that’s another word for totally unfair and highly annoying.”
“Something like that,” he said, grimacing as he shifted to lower the bookcase.
Strangely enough, ‘totally unfair and highly annoying’ would make a fine subtitle for The Lies That Bind
No, even this basic ignorance of the very subject our heroine is supposed to be expert in was not sufficient horror to impel me to write another of my pointless reports on books. That dishonor belongs to the passage quoted above, wherein our British former secret service agent and therefore (in the logic of such books) expert in the King’s English utterly misuses the word ‘chary’. I stumbled over this passage and tried in vain for some time to ascertain just what word the author thought she was using; I finally had to confess my ignorance. (Hairy? Harried? Scary?) So for this final felonious assault upon the very language itself, I charge The Lies That Bind with its multitude of crimes and plead that it be consigned to the dark donjon of unworthy books.
The Middle English definition describes how this book makes me feel
However, such a fate is not to be. Not only has Kate Carlisle met with success with her Brooklyn the bookbinder series of ‘mystery’ novels, she has foisted another improbably named character upon the unwary world in the Shannon Hammer ‘Fixer-Upper Mysteries’. Set in the fictional town of Lighthouse Cove, California (which is consciously modeled as a West Coast variant of Miss Fletcher’s Cabot Cove), that new series has already seen eight books and three Hallmark Channel movies. And the ‘Bibliophile Mysteries’? We’ve been discussing book number three, and number fourteen was published only last June. Putting both series together, that means 2.2 books per year for the past decade. Oh, and Ms. Carlisle has already contracted to deliver at least two more books in each series. Well, as I say often about myself, “If I’m so smart, how come …”
Psychiatric nosology frequently ignores the cultural determinants of so-called mental illnesses.
2. fulminate — to flash like lightning; to explode; to thunder forth condemnation(s); to inveigh violently
Though the board has fulminated numberless edicts, motions, and denunciations against the developer, the situation remains exactly as it was one year ago.
3. peach — to inform against; to divulge
We stayed out of the ambit of Veronica James as much as possible, as she was known as a narc, having peached her parents to the cops for growing marijuana in their garage.
4. inconscient — unconscious
Try as you might to appeal to their reason, this mob is under the sway of inconscient passions and forces that cannot be negated by logic.
5. facetious — waggish, not meant to be taken seriously; humorous
I was on the very verge of calling my banker when I realized that Tomas was being merely facetious in making his ill-advised remarks about a run on the Central Bibb Trust & Bank.
6. ebrious — intoxicated; addicted to drink; of or related to intoxication
I certainly hope that these words were penned about me by some ebrious cad for I’m damned if I’ll allow a sober person to call me such names.
7. micturate — to urinate
The unrepentant miscreant was discovered micturating upon the very slippers that had sent him packing to the back yard only the day before.
8. harrow — to break up (as with a harrow); to crush, tear, lacerate; to despoil
He protested that he only wished me well, but Jeremy had so harrowed my deepest feelings in our previous encounter that I shied away from any more of his supposedly helpful verbal depredations.
9. fecund — capable of giving birth or of producing fruit; fruitful, prolific
Perhaps the story of my mistakes may provide fecund material from which true creative works may arise, just as delicious mushrooms may sprout forth from the most feculent manure.
10. excurrent — exiting, running out
Fighting against the excurrent high schoolers bursting their bonds on this the last day of school, the maudlin detective meditated as best he could in the noise and shoving upon the vicissitudes of life and just what percentage of these quondam students would come under his purview.
One of the reasons (among many) that I despair of ever pulling together mix CDs for my cousins, is the occasionally wondrous serendipity of random play choices by iTunes on my phone whilst driving to and fro. Recently the last two days of July saw just such fortuitous track listings pulled out of the algorithmic æther as I went to and from work. The song choices are not perfect (the Latin selections, in particular, could have been better, but the fault is more likely with the paucity of my collection than the Brownian Motion behind my phone’s choices), but I have to ask myself if I could have sequenced better even given weeks of planning.
Here is the listing for the songs heard going and coming, on July 30 2020:
July 30, 2020
Going (side A)
time: 28:35
“Leben heisst Leben” – Laibach
“Brothers In Arms” – Dire Straits
“Here You Come Again” – Dolly Parton
“Come Rain Or Come Shine” – Billie Holiday
“In The Light” – Led Zeppelin
Coming home (side B)
time: 29:53
“I Am A Rock” – Simon & Garfunkel
“Man Or Animal” – Audioslave
“Dónde Están” – Siempre Así
“Driving Your Girlfriend Home” – Morrisey
“Bongo Festeris” – Jack Costanzo
“World On A String” – Neil Young
[live version from Roxy: Tonight’s The Night Live]
“Pifa” (pastoral symphony) – from Handel’s Messiah
Karl Richter w/ The London Philharmonic Choir
Perhaps even better than the day before, the next set of music made me doubt my ability to curate a mix CD for friends and family; it also made my commute much more enjoyable that it would have been otherwise. Not all random mixes from iTunes are this good—I’ve been told that my car music is mostly unlistenable—but I like it. I do not stream, and see no reason to do so as long as I get music like this.
That said, here is the listing for the following day, July 31, 2020:
July 31, 2020
Going (side C)
time: 25:50
“Haitian Divorce” – Steely Dan
“I’m Bound For That Promised Land” – Hank Williams
“Prelude” – Joe Gallant & Illuminati
“Your Latest Trick” – Dire Straits
“Close The Door Richard” – Burl Ives
“Let The Bass Go” – The D.O.C.
“Suite In A: Allemande” – from Book II of Marin Marais’s Pièces de Viole
performed by Jérôme Hantaï & Alix Verzier on bass viols and Pierre Hantaï on harpsichord
Coming home (side D)
time: 28:11 (not including bonus track)
“Think It Over” – B. B. King
“Bees” – Laura Cantrell
“Der Letzte Countdown” – The Heimatdamisch
“Talisman” – Air
“Sunshine And Clouds And Everything” – Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!
“Mockingbird” – Eminem
“Du-Tam” – [Serbian folk song from old 78 collection (not mine)]
“Hip Length” – Ursula 1000
Bonus Track: Lowell Thomas 6:30 PM [Eastern War Time] broadcast for NBC News on D-Day
The songs offered by my phone come from a panoply of playlists both smart and otherwise which I maintain in iTunes (and which I fear may leave me—as massive amounts of hand-picked album art left some early adopters—if I ever “up”grade to the latest MacOS*) and have crafted with both attentiveness and negligence over the past decade or so. Thus, for example, track numbers A2, A5, B6, B11, C1, C4, C6, and D13 come from heavy rotation playlists, while numbers A3, B14, D7, D10, and D15 derive from lists of most recently added tracks. The remainder bubbled up from semi-random rules meant to capture stuff I haven’t heard in a long while, stuff I liked a while back, and stuff I’ve never heard. I should also point out—as if it were not painfully obvious to most of y’all who perused the tracks listed above—that I am hopelessly stale bourgeois boring person who has ‘taste’ only in the same way that a person who eats nothing but donuts can be said to have a ‘diet’.
* I plan to write in more detail about my woes with the Apple ecosystem later, so please strive to hold back your knee-jerk responses of “You should use Linux!” or “Serves you write for not just buying a PC!” until then, if ever.
1. forfend — to protect by precautionary measures; to prevent, to fend off
Try as they might to forfend from her everything likely to bring Clarence back to mind, they were powerless to stop the lawyers with their evil videotaped depositions.
2. glabella — line of flat space on forehead between and above eyebrows; central part of the cephalic shield of a trilobite
Anthropologists and gentlemen scientists (if I am not being tautological) early noted that the glabella of most men and women is smooth and devoid of hair (hence the name), though there have always been exceptions to this rule (v. Kahlo).
3. borage — herbaceous plant with blue flowers, thought to have medicinal properties
Though in the English-speaking world it has been relegated to a mere garnish in a Pimm’s Cup (and often cucumber supplants it even in that role), the ancient Greek author Pliny identified borage as the ‘Nepenthe’ of Homer, which caused forgetfulness and erased trouble from the drinker’s mind when it was mixed with wine.
4. contemn — to treat as worth little, to view with contempt; to disdain, to scorn
Perhaps in his public words he does not contemn those craven sycophants or the deluded masses who have granted his every whim, but be sure that he despises both groups for their mean and base toadyism.
5. lantern — (architecture) open structure atop a roof permitting light to enter and smoke to leave
The beautiful lantern atop the imposing dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral has long held a fascination for tourists with strong thighs.
6. docetism — doctrine which holds that Jesus had no material existence, rendering his bodily suffering only apparent
Though some have argued that Philippians 2:7 (wherein it states that Jesus “was made in the likeness of men”) gives Biblical support for the heresy of doecetism, most scholars agree that the verse only refers to the fact that Jesus in his full Godly essence was much more than just a man.
7. doddle — (obsolete) to shake or nod (the head)
Aunt May finished the short letter, heaved a weary sigh, doddled her head for a long moment, and finally allowed a single hot tear to fall onto her apron before slowly placing Jack’s note back in its envelope.
8. eagre — very high tidal flood in a narrowing estuary
Either through particularly accurate planning or just dumb luck, all traces of the murderer were erased by the swollen eagre that flowed up the River Trent and washed over the crime scene at the base of the steep embankment.
9. panegyric — public oration or writing in praise of someone or something, encomium; laudation, eulogy
We were all surprised by this fervent panegyric in praise of someone for whom Señor Martí had previously expressed only disdain.
10. paregoric — camphorated tincture of opium, with anise and benzoic acid for flavoring
If you have to quiet him so that you can sleep, just give him three (or four) drops of paregoric in a teaspoon of water.
Bonus Vocabulary
(slang)
on the fiddle — of someone engaged in petty cheating
We were all shocked to learn that the school counselor Mr. Tulburne was on the fiddle and had been letting the Posey brothers store their drugs in his own office the whole time.
1. wapentake — subdivision of certain shires in Northern England and the Midlands, corresponding to the hundreds in other counties
Though an orderly appropriation was to be hoped for, in some outlying wapentakes the bailiff summarily took whatever goods were upon his list, often without payment or with payment only through tallies.
2. fog — long and thickly growing grass
In the winter, the partridge will often roost within the dead fog above the fallow fields or among the roots of trees.
3. tympanic — related to the eardrum; of or resembling a drum
Though my trap caused no harm—at least no physical harm; I am unable to speak to the psychological damage to tiny rodents from being captured in a large plastic bin—my sleep was fitful all that night, as the little jumping mouse flung himself against the clear plastic lid in a fruitless though tympanic attempt at escape.
4. mickle — (archaic) much, a large amount
Mickle cares make a weary soul if you’ve not got something to help you bear the load.
5. edema — morbid accumulation of watery fluid into serous cavities or interstices between joints, dropsy
Malnutrition had taken its toll on the poor girl, though the edema in her ankles and legs was only the most obvious sign of the damage that lack of vital proteins had wreaked upon her frail body.
6. coscinomancy — divination by use of scissors and sieve
Just as the exact details of reading portents by pawing through a dead animal’s entrails are now lost to us, nobody alive today (which exempts any summoned spirit, I suppose) can honestly be sure of just how conscinomancy was performed.
7. clough — valley or ravine with very steep sides, defile
Down the clough flew the rough rider upon a coal-black stallion whose clattering hooves somehow maintained its vicious pace across the scree and shale that littered the valley floor.
8. architrave — primary beam or lintel lying atop a series of columns, the lowest section of a classical entablature (below the frieze and cornice), epistyle; frame with mouldings around door or window
Entering the prison I felt its oppressive force weighing me down as if this should be my last sight of the outside world, condemned to fall into a black pit beneath the dank and dark architraves of that ancient building made darker still by the humid air which had turned the stones themselves a Stygian black.
9. synoptic — of or taking a comprehensive view of a subject
It is doubtful whether any such synoptic sociology could survive in the current environment of modern academia.
10. draggle — to soil by dragging through mire or wet grass; to make wet and dirty
Stephen Douglas himself warned preachers not to draggle their long robes in the foul pool of partisan politics.
Bonus Vocabulary
(Latin)
sub verbo (also abbreviated as s.v.) — “under the word”, citation form for entry in dictionary or encyclopedia
Many quotations using this abstruse term may be found in the Glossar zu Psychologie-Begriffen of Professor Helmut Birke, sub verbo.
1. reredos — decorated screen or wall behind altar in a church; brick or stone back of a fireplace
The first project of the Church Restoration Committee will be to fund the repainting of the reredos in the Saint Matthew’s Chapel, using the extensive notes of the 19th-Century antiquarian Devon Shrikeston as our guide for the colors.
2. negus — sweetened wine and hot water, with lemon and spice
“Please take the chair closest to the fire and I’ll call for some negus from the kitchen.”
3. lawn — fine linen fabric
The frill of her brocade skirt was made from cloky sheer lawn, blistered in a badger pattern, her supposed ‘spirit animal’.
4. accidie — sloth, torpor; indifference, esp. in religious duties
Though it remains on the lists of deadly sins under the rubric of ‘Sloth’, which most today interpret as mere laziness, the religious of medieval times were all too aware of the dangers of accidie, perhaps best described by George Willis as “that causeless languor and discontent with life which we call ‘the blues.'”
5. Mohock — violent aristocratic thugs who tormented London in the early 18th Century
Though some doubt has been cast upon the very existence of an organized group calling themselves Mohocks, it is a fact that attacks by ruffians plagued Londoners in 1712, and the group—fictive or not—struck a resounding chord against the class consciousness of an England wherein aristocratic thugs could engage in violent criminality with impunity while the lowest classes could be hanged for stealing bread.
6. armscye — armhole in a garment
There are no armscyes or indeed any holes at all in a true Roman tunic, which creates its effects entirely by clever drapery.
7. houppelande — medieval long-bodied outerwear, usually with full flared sleeves and sometimes trimmed with fur
Lady Alys seemed determined to impress her noble kinsman, and wore her new houppelande with its fur collar though it was wholly inappropriate for the solemn occasion.
8. adduce — to cite, to present as evidence
Not a single example of the crime can be found in the court records, nor have the proponents of the law adduced any records from the newspapers or any other source other than the wild claims of anonymous persons on Twitter, leading one to wonder what this tempest in a teapot is truly about.
9. mitosis — (biology) part of cell division cycle in which replicated chromosomes divide into separate nuclei; by extension, cell division itself
Under the influence of the sacred plants the clouds seem to fill with the figures of all his ancestors, only to undergo a hideous mitosis where each forbear split into two people, only to split again, and again, and again, in some sort of perverse vision of his family tree written across the heavens in these fevered dreams that he realized must carry deep meaning but which were only making him nauseous.
10. anuria — lack of urine, failure of kidneys to produce urine
Though the patient’s first report of anuria suggested kidney failure, his subsequent intense pain made clear that kidney stones were to blame.
1. prelapsarian — of or pertaining to the time before the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden; innocent and pristine; supralapsarian (vide infra)
My studies in that liberal arts college in New England were an academic prelapsarian nirvana, funded by the GI Bill.
2. blacksnake — long, heavy leather whiplash
He weren’t the worst man to work for, ‘cept he loved the blacksnake a mite much for my liking.
3. hysteresis — the lag of magnetic effects behind their causes; system phenomenon in which present reaction to change is dependent upon past reactions to change
Looking back at the Great American Hysteresis the economists were able to say, as they are always able to say, that it was obvious in retrospect just where things went off the rails.
4. anosmia — loss of the olfactory sense
Like most narcissists, Jacob exhibited that selective anosmia common to many who place their own actions and needs above those of everyone else, and believed quite fervently that his shit did not, in fact, stink.
5. infralapsarian — of the Calvinist doctrine that God’s election of some to eternal life followed His foreknowledge of the Fall of Man (opposed to supralapsarian, vide infra)
The whole mess conjured up by the supralapsarian-infralapsarian controversy should be quite familiar to anyone who has been made to suffer through the worst contradictions of time travel science fiction.
6. dysgeusia — distortion of the sense of taste
Though I stopped smoking several years ago, a lingering dysgeusia remains as a permanent reminder of that choice.
7. geep — hybrid of a sheep and a goat
Though rare, the geep manages to combine the worst elements of each of its parents, with a coarse coat and a sempiternally randy nature.
8. marcel — to make waves in hair through the use of irons; such waved hair
Aunt Regina’s beautifully marcelled hair made a stark contrast with the threadbare veil she wore over it.
9. cothurnus — tragedy, tragic style, grave style of acting; buskin, thick-soled boot worn by ancient actors
So terribly has the cothurnus been abused upon our current stages, that actors who should know better now declaim when they should soliloquize, shout when they should declaim, and make faces when they should emote.
10. supralapsarian — of the Calvinist doctrine that God’s predestination of some to eternal life and His condemnation of others to eternal damnation preceded (in some way) God’s decree of the Creation and the Fall of Man (opposed to infralapsarian, vide supra)
Eventually the entire synod found itself wrecked upon the minutest of treacherous rocks, the tiny difference between the supralapsarian predestination of the elect which implied the sacrifice of Christ only for those selfsame elect and the infralapsarian notion of the sinful nature of man which implied that God chose just whom he would save.
