As the storm subsided into a steady shower, Daniel looked out into the comforting grey sky and he realized how much he had missed rainy days, realized that he had always been a pluviophile, perhaps since he used to visit his grandfather in the little county house with the tin roof that rattled with excitement every time a storm rolled over the decrepit shack.
2. tantivy — (archaic) at full gallop, headlong; a rapid gallop; hunting cry whilst riding at full gallop
And so the men in their fine red coats rode tantivy over the fields and gardens and laws of the lower sorts, leaving hunger and disorder in the wake of their finely attired hunting party.
3. calcimine — whitewash
His clothes stained with paint and calcimine, his hands reeking of turpentine, Mr. Popper cut a sorry figure among the church ladies he found himself closeted with.
4. attap — mangrove palm used in the construction of homes and buildings in villages throughout Malaysia, Indonesia, etc.; thatch roof made of such material
Lying insensible against a hard bolster along the edge of the veranda under its attap roof, the injured soldier breathed raggedly and at times seemed to stop altogether, after which he would emit a keening sough which spoke of the hardships he had endured during the terrible attack.
5. raw-boned — gaunt, overly lean, having a bony physique
He looked dapper enough in his three-piece suit and fedora, a cane held loosely in his left hand, but having seen him at physical therapy that morning, raw-boned and struggling to exercise his palsied legs, I knew the supreme effort his display of nonchalance must be costing him.
6. athwart — across from side to side, transversely; (nautical) from side to side of a ship; across the course of
My good intentions were flummoxed by the worries and bad thoughts which continually threw themselves athwart my mind, distracting my focus and best efforts with atrabilious fear and guilt.
7. fuller’s earth — absorbent clay (traditionally a hydrous aluminum silicate) used for removing stains or cleaning oil from cloth or skin, along with many other uses
After an attack the clothing worn should be liberally treated with fuller’s earth to decontaminate them of any remaining chemical agent.
8. quintain — post, or object on moving crossbar mounted on such a post, used for target practice in jousting or darts
No matter how practiced he became tilting against the quintain, the young Sir Rivers always faltered when jousting with a live opponent.
9. pigsney (also pigsny) — darling, pet (as term of affection); eye
“Oh, please do, pigsney, say you will come, if you aren’t there I shall be devastated, utterly.”
10. gob — lump, mass of a slimy substance; (pl.) a large amount
Sure, he has gobs of money, but I cannot stand to be in his vulgar presence more than a moment before I want to retch because of his gaucherie and rudeness.
Bonus Vocabulary
(British slang, 19th c.)
dollymop — part-time prostitute
She dreamed that one day one of her men would be more than smitten, would want to make her his lady, and she’d need never play the dollymop no more, but in the morning she would feel the cold air and the ebbing youth of her body, and she knew it was only a dream, a common one at that.
Just watched the 1935 film version of Hammett’s novel The Glass Key, which I mentioned in yesterday’s book report. I had never seen the short (just over 1-¼ hours) movie starring George Raft, and wanted to see how it compared with the 1942 remake featuring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. The latter film had always disappointed me, since I am in love with the original book and felt that, though the plots of the book and the 1942 movie are nearly identical, the Alan Ladd vehicle just never seemed to gel together—maybe I should say that it just congealed into a inharmonious mess. So I had quite restrained hopes as I started watching the first film version of 1935, four years after the publication of the novel.
George Raft exceeded those hopes and excelled as Ned—excuse me—Ed* Beaumont, the fixer and all-around go-to guy for political boss Paul Madvig, here played ably by the stalwart Edward Arnold. Raft is letter-perfect as the fast-talking, faster-thinking gambler who plays his cards close to his chest, speaking only with his mouth while his face says nothing, just his flashing eyes giving evidence of the wheels turning behind his outwardly calm visage. Where Ladd played the part slightly louche, Raft portrays the clever sharper always trying to stay two steps ahead of everyone else in the game. He nails the character of Beaumont and his actions in the demimonde of corrupt small city politics, and brings to life a figure who could have grown up in the hardscrabble world of Hell’s Kitchen, as Raft did in real life.
The gambling fan
But even in the first scene introducing Ned—sorry, I only finished the novel yesterday and can’t help thinking of… well, never mind—Ed Beaumont early signs of movie problems appear. The novel opens with Ned on a losing streak, a gambler behind the eight ball who’s been picking ’em wrong for weeks. Our movie’s Ed, on the other hand, is introduced winning (at a fun game where bets are placed on which blade of a fan will stop at the bottom when the fan is turned off) and he keeps on winning throughout the film, never losing a single bet. This small change is indicative of divergences from the original that will eventually pull the movie so far off course from the original book that it lands at an entirely different destination, with a thud.
The movie opens with a horrifying car wreck†, which is the necessary but not sufficient motive for the unraveling of boss Madvig’s power. You see, the driver of the killer car is a staunch Madvig supporter, and he and his brother-in-law expect his boss to fix this little accident up as undoubtedly has been done before. Madvig refuses, however, because of the upcoming election which cannot be endangered by blowback from something even as minor as suppressing a vehicular manslaughter charge. This refusal comes back to haunt the Madvig machine (here called a ‘Voters League’—the book has the boss working out of either his Log Cabin Club or the East State Construction & Contracting Company he also owns) when Taylor Henry is murdered under murky circumstances. Taylor (played in his brief scenes by Ray Milland in an early role) is the son of Senator John T. Henry, a Madvig candidate, and the political boss was seen arguing with the boy shortly before his death by the brother-in-law who Madvig wouldn’t help earlier. Madvig’s enemy, Shad O’Rory, uses the witness testimony and other sources of dirt in his own newspaper, The Observer, to tie Madvig to the murder in hopes of bring down his political machine. Oh, and Paul Madvig is in love with Senator Henry’s daughter, who doesn’t love him.
This seemingly complicated plot is actually handled quite well (with several more complications) in the film, and I initially approved of many of the changes from the book to the film, seeing a cinematographic necessity as well as a speedy pace that required the usual truncations, replacements, and graftings in a movie adaptation of a book. (What happened to Deckard’s wife between Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? and Blade Runner, for example?) More of the novel’s plot shows up onscreen in the 1942 version, like the weird confrontation at the house of The Observer‘s editor, but the raw-boned detachment of Ned or Ed Beaumont comes through much more successfully in this 1935 original. The chemistry between George Raft and Edward Arnold is also sharper and more believable in this earlier version than that between Alan Ladd and Brian Donleavy, who portrayed Madvig in the later film. And the mother of Madvig—who I don’t think even appears in the 1942 film—is played brilliantly by Emma Dunn, and steals almost all of her scenes, except the last one.
George Raft adjusts Edward Arnold’s bowtie
Because two big changes happened between the publication of the novel in 1931 and the release of this movie in 1935: the end of Prohibition (1933) and enforcement of the Hays Code (1934). The climatic scene of the story takes place in a bar, not a speakeasy, and the patina of easy crime and corruption which seems omnipresent in the novel is watered down like the whisky Ned gets served in the book. The failed suppression of vice portrayed in the novel is foiled by the successful censorship of the reality of crime and evil in the movie, leaving us a story washed over with calcimine.
(Aside: Another change between book and movie, this one just pointless to me, unless George Raft asked for it, is that the Beaumont character always orders rye, instead of the scotch he habitually drinks in Hammett’s novel. This is particularly noticeable and hence galling, in the very fight scene just mentioned, at the beginning of which Ed Beaumont orders rye while his drunken companion orders scotch, in a complete inversion of the novel. Also, why does Raft have to punch a woman? That, too, was jarring, and more than jarring, unnecessary from sheerly a story point of view.)
Though the crucial, almost masochistic beating in the novel makes an appearance in the movie, the effects of which are shown by Raft’s fine acting rather than makeup, the easy sexual charm and cunning of Beaumont are missing entirely from the 1935 film. In this regard the film loses both to the book and to the 1942 remake, which at least had the tension between Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake (who played the part of the Senator’s daughter). The two main female protagonists in the original film version are almost non-entities, though they do wear clothes well. (Not so well as Veronica Lake, but then, who does?) The erasure of a prime plot point—the anonymous letters about the Taylor Henry murder which drive much of the action of the novel—leaves the film choppy and drastic, as if scenes were missing from the version we’re watching. And then, to top it all off, the finale has to invoke the old ‘let’s gather all the prime suspects and solve the crime’ trope of English mysteries, leaving us with a last reel of the movie almost unrelated to anything which came before.
The final scene, which I won’t reveal, reduces the goodwill created by Raft and Arnold’s fine acting to rubble, and left me with a sour taste in my mouth, as if I’d just eaten cotton candy made from spoiled milk.
Still, it is pretty short. You could waste your time in worse ways, say in playing yet another series of sudoku games on your phone.
* For reasons unclear to me, both film versions change the first name of the protagonist from ‘Ned’ to ‘Ed’.
† Though the car crash scene is truly well-done, one of the most visceral and frightening I’ve seen, perhaps it presages in the beginning the wreck this movie becomes at the end.
Dashiell Hammett’s The Glass Key is one of the ten best books of all time. At least in English, which is the only language I feel even the slightest competence for such judgment. (Being born and raised in Georgia, English is my second language, never having had a first.) I’d be hard-pressed to say what the other nine are—or even whether there are only nine other books in the Top Ten, but The Glass Key certainly makes the list. If you’ve never read it, you should get a copy and put it on the table next to your bed; if you’ve already read it, you should pull it down from the shelf and start reading it again. I just have, and am once again pummeled and left reeling by this perfect novel.
They stood thus, less than a yard apart—one blond, tall and powerfully built, leaning far forward, big shoulders hunched, big fists ready; the other dark of hair and eye, tall and lean, body bent a little to one side with an arm slanting down from that side to hold a heavy glass seidel by its handle—and except for their breathing there was no sound in the room. No sound came in from the bar-room on the other side of the thin door, the rattling of glasses nor the hum of talk nor the splash of water.
This noir crime story centers on the best protagonist ever to solve a murder, Ned Beaumont, attractive to the ladies and, as he describes himself, “a gambler and a politician’s hanger-on.” Beaumont is a man who always knows the score, who is always working the angles, though he does have the disconcerting habit of walking into a fight he cannot win. The politician—Paul Madvig—is the boss of an unnamed city somewhere near New York, with whom Beaumont has been working for a year and has become close. Ned will go to the mattress for his friend, and does at one point, almost losing his life due to what another character dubs his “massacrist” streak. Perhaps Beaumont truly is a “massacrist”; he has the sharpest mind in town, however, and everybody knows it.
She smiled then. “Surely you don’t believe in dreams?”
He did not smile. “I don’t believe in anything, but I’m too much of a gambler not to be affected by a lot of things.”
Like The Maltese Falcon, the novel is written with no internal monologue at all; the characters do this and say that, and the reader has to decide what it all means, if anything. Critics now debate what motivates Ned Beaumont. The novel screams (as Dorothy Parker did of Hammett) that what people actually do is what matters. In his strange way, Beaumont uses the truth as a finely honed weapon in a town full of liars, victorious—in his way—only because nobody ever believes him. Truth is better than lies, because believing the lies will doom you, but the truth will still hurt.
“I can’t stand for it. If I stand for it I’m licked, my nerve’s gone. I’m not going to stand for it. I’m going after him.”
A different book cover, this one depicting a scene that doesn’t happen in the book.
If there is another novel which so perfectly limns its characters and environs without intruding upon their supposed thoughts and motivations, I am unaware of it. I could re-read this book one hundred times and enjoy it every time, whether or not I got ‘something new’ out of each reading (the usual standard for re-reading doesn’t apply here). I haven’t yet seen the 1935 George Raft movie version, so I cannot say anything about it. But I’m well aware that the 1942 film version of the novel starring Alan Ladd doesn’t do the source material justice. Watching Veronica Lake is always very pleasant, but the movie never gels together, nor do the characters. As far as I’m concerned, then, the best movie version is the Coen brothers’ Miller’s Crossing, which isn’t based on The Glass Key, at least not overtly; but the ‘feel’ of the Gabriel Byrne film is very reminiscent of the Hammett novel. Check it out, after you’ve read (or re-read) the novel.
When we received the news, we had no champagne and no way to get any (this was back when the Blue Laws were still in effect and you’ll remember we found out on a Sunday), so we shared a Barmecidal toast from our imaginary flutes and wished the future Princeton man well.
3. divagate — to wander or stray from place to place, or subject to subject
I would never have divagated so far from the appeal for the Marian Missions had you not expressed such interest in my snake tattoo.
4. equipage — carriage
From his apartments I could see the equipages moving down Pall Mall, a wonderful world from which I now was excluded.
5. scrim — thin fabric used in lining upholstery and in theater for backdrops, etc.
Still dripping from the shower, he pulled aside the scrim curtain and peered outside trying to see the source of the unusual noise.
6. frog — belt attachment for carrying sword, bayonet, hatchet, or machete
He came flying towards us, his bayonet frog bouncing against his thigh as his legs pumped furiously.
7. howsomever — to whatever extent, in whatever manner; nonetheless, notwithstanding
That dog kept rooting around the flower bed; howsomever, we bathed her each and every time she got filthy, wanting her to be all pretty when you arrived.
8. gork — braindead (or nearly) patient kept alive only by artificial means
He hated this part of the job, harvesting spinal fluid from the gorks in the prison cellar.
9. laver — basin for washing, as of hands; baptismal font
He performed his morning ablutions, rinsing his hands and face with water from the laver, cold though it was.
10. windrow — row of hay or other such product laid out for drying
The baler attachment can make bales directly from the windrow, though of course sufficient time should be allowed to ensure thorough curing of the hay.
“What does that bindlestiff have on you, that you keep putting up with his nonsense, giving him money and clothes, and now a job?”
2. lineament — line, design; (often pl.) feature of a face or body; (pl.) distinctive features
Barely restrained grief suffused the warrior’s lineaments as he gazed darkly upon the guilty prisoners.
3. edulcorate — to purify, to remove acids or other harsh elements by washing; (obsolete) to sweeten
By extreme ascetic practices and arcane meditations, he had so edulcorated his soul as to be seemingly immune to the harsh imprecations and accusations of his political and religious opponents.
4. hideola — (slang) hideous, ugly
He’s fine, most of the time, only when that song comes on he goes all crazy, like his soul becomes hideola like Bukowski on a sterno bender.
5. anaphrodisiac — agent or substance capable of reducing sexual desire
In spite of what many male perverts seem to believe, I am reliably informed that an unsolicited dick pic is an anaphrodisiac to almost all women.
6. sellsword — mercenary
The friar had a tawdry past, having been a sellsword in Hawkwood’s White Company before fleeing Florence in highly questionable circumstances.
7. rick — stack of hay, corn, etc.
The reivers burned the ricks and outbuildings in order to ambush the farmers as they rushed out to extinguish the fires.
8. wrick — (also rick) to wrench, twist, or sprain
The old man wricked his back trying to roll out the second-story window after professing his love for the maiden.
9. propinquity — nearness, proximity
I reveled in Marjorie’s sweet propinquity, inhaling her lovely fragrance, and essayed to do nothing by word or deed which would impel her to leave my side.
10. poulterer — dealer in poultry (as well as hares and other small game)
The poulterer proved to be a suspicious, ill-tempered, unwashed fellow, who obviously believed that we sought the source of Lord Halfton’s goose only so as to cheat him out of his fee.
I have just finished reading book #375 since I started keeping count in 2015, and, as I have done when occasion suits and time permits, I here present a listing of the last 25 books I’ve read. Make of it what you will. (As usual, I do not include comics and graphic novel books in my count, though they are listed below.)
That 375th book read was many books in one, or rather, the parts of many books made one, or instead, let us say that Italo Calvino creates the fractional books his protagonist comes across in the course of this … novel? I am talking of If on a winter’s night a traveler, in case you have not already guessed, and I have still not decided what I think of the work, or works. Creative tour de force of literary genius? Or self-indulgent slumgullion stew of unfinished and unworkable ideas? Perhaps there is no reason to choose.
This last set of twenty-five books read commenced with #351, a quickie read from the Audubon Nature Program, Life On A Coral Reef, which I wrote about in an earlier post.
Also read right at the beginning of this latest quarter-century of books was the 4th issue of The Month at Goodspeed’s Book Shop, a discursive catalogue of the latest arrivals at a wonderful bookstore in Boston known to me only through these tiny staple-bound volumes, of which I have quite a few, actually. Calling these little books ‘catalogues’ is very much an understatement, for the delightfully chatty notes for the promoted items, which include history, biography, and much bibliographic detail (as well as a good bit of sheer gossip), are still well worth reading today. Unfortunately, I will have to find a time machine to visit the store, as it closed in 1995.
I wrote about The Devil Of Nanking earlier, so I won’t repeat myself here, save to say that it is, after all, a novel, not history. The book about the great Paris flood is a good read, and I also enjoyed a little comfort food science fiction. I have since sold off one of the other books in this set, though not because I didn’t try to sell two.
#
Read
Author
Title
Genre
356
9/24/19
David H. Freedman & Charles C. Mann
At Large: the Strange Case of the World’s Biggest Internet Invasion
A lot of good stuff in the next little slice. I wrote about Mission of Gravityearlier, and here will only repeat that it is great science fiction of the hardest steel alloy. I also finished a Norton critical edition of Alice In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass (with The Hunting Of The Shark included); I believe I should read the Alice tales every hundred books or so, though I haven’t kept quite that pace. I had been going through this one for some time, and am glad to get it off the pile next to my bed. All of these books—save one—are highly recommended.
The Masters Revealed: Madame Blavatsky and the Myth of the Great White Lodge
Wacko
Primacy of place in the next five books goes to an 88-page book from 1897, an annotated issue of Thomas De Quincey’s long essay, Flight Of A Tartar Tribe, part of the Maynard’s English Classics Series. The subject of the the book was a natural follow-up to both the Blavatsky and the Genghis Khan books, and De Quincey’s stylish prose is almost always a pleasant read; this was no exception.
The Ariana Franklin mystery books annoyed me with their psychic anachronism, and the Orbit anthology may have annoyed me because of mine. The Peter Rabbit book, however, was really wonderful, and I was surprised to find that it took me over a half-century to get around to it.
#
Read
Author
Title
Genre
366
10/19/19
Thomas De Quincey
Flight Of A Tartar Tribe
Essays
367
10/23/19
Ariana Franklin
Mistress of the Art of Death
Mystery
368
10/28/19
Ariana Franklin
A Murderous Procession
Mystery
369
10/29/19
Beatrix Potter
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
Children’s
370
10/30/19
Damon Knight, ed.
The Best From Orbit Volumes 1-10
SF/Fantasy
Finally got around to reading The Moving Toyshop, which I found amazing, terrific, wildly funny, and very engaging—right up to the point where the hero solves the crime. The ridiculous solution was not the sort of ridiculous which had merited the glowing adjectives of the previous sentence, but the sort of ridiculous that spurs men and women to write declamatory letters to the editor. I forbore such a course of action, given that the author is long dead. The other books here were all very good, and the soft reading provided by the Retief stories was a nice pre-palliative for the mental exertions required by Calvino.
#
Read
Author
Title
Genre
371
10/31/19
Edmund Crispin
The Moving Toyshop
Mystery
372
11/4/19
Groff Conklin, ed.
Giants Unleashed
SF/Fantasy
373
11/5/19
Beatrix Potter
The Tale Of Squirrel Nutkin
Children’s
374
11/12/19
Keith Laumer
Retief At Large
SF/Fantasy
375
11/18/19
Italo Calvino
If on a winter’s night a traveler
Fiction
Still reading a lot of Science Fiction, as well as some Children’s books located on shelves I have regained access to. My pace has slowed a tad lately, as I am attempting NaNoWriMo once more, though I am writing a memoir rather than a novel. I still have piles, but thankfully they are of books. Until next time….
The lists of previously read books may be found by following the links:
1. catoptric — of or related to a mirror, or to optical reflection
He felt lost in this strange, emotional world, in which people’s motivations always eluded him, and wished he could create some catoptric device capable of splitting and reflecting the psychic waves around him, a psychological Michelson-Morley experiment to enable him to determine just which way the social aether around him flowed.
2. water-cart — vehicle consisting of a barrel or tank on wheels, used primarily to water streets, though sometimes used to provide water for consumption
After his third failure at a desk job, the boss gave Hector the duty of manning the water-cart patrolling the south side, near the stockyards.
3. buccal — of or related to the cheek
Once bitten, he couldn’t seem to stop reinjuring his cheek whenever he ate, and of course he couldn’t slap a bandage into his buccal cavity.
4. acroter — pedestal at apex or bases of pediment, upon which statue or ornament (an acroterium or acroterion) is placed
The statues themselves had long been lost, making the stubby acroteria on either side of the squat temple resemble Hellboy’s cut-off devil’s horns.
5. argal — therefore (used facetiously to suggest clumsy reasoning)
You say you read very little, argal, this dictionary will be quite a valuable book for you, as it shall retain its pristine pages and thus its resale value.
6. phaeton — light four-wheeled carriage with forward-facing seats
To one side of the mounts of the principals and their seconds stood the doctor’s phaeton which had been brought in the possibly forlorn hope that the loser of the duel might be brought back to health if he could be carried away quickly to the medico’s surgery.
7. annelid — worm
Now you shall see how the annelid turns about!
8. scathe — to injure, to damage; to destroy by fire or lightning, etc.; to shrivel or waste with invective
You can still make out where the old cabin stood, before it was scathed by the roiling flames of the meth lab explosion.
9. joss — Chinese cult image or idol
Although the term became associated with both the incense used in worship and the house where the idols of the deities were maintained, the term ‘joss‘ itself is not of Chinese, but of Portuguese origin, being a corruption of the word ‘Deus’.
10. rufous — brownish red, ferruginous
Pete had the worst case of trucker’s tan I ever hope to see, his left arm a hairy rufous mass while his right, though just as massive, seemed a pallid thread-covered log in comparison.
1. steatopygic — having a fat ass, of or related to the possession of very large buttocks due to the accumulation of fat there and in the thighs and hips (esp. in women)
True, he had been easily distracted by her forward protuberances, but when she turned around and began twerking in all her steatopygic glory he found himself enthralled by the promise of the booty dance to end all booty dances.
2. bliaut — medieval overgarment with large skirts, worn by both sexes
The saint was depicted in the church sculpture wearing only a simple, unadorned bliaut, in a telling contrast to the men making a martyr of him, all of whom were adorned in the finest clothes and accoutrements of luxury.
3. chiromancer (also cheiromancer) — palm reader
At the far end of the circus grounds, past all the other sideshows, we found the dark, curtained hovel where resided the chiromancer who had predicted such a dire fate for Dolly.
4. farouche — unsociably sullen; fierce
The boy was not so much troubled as farouche, rejecting all social advances with a sneering disregard for the feelings of either his interlocutor or himself.
5. demurrage — remaining in port beyond the agreed upon time; payment for such delay
The several injunctions had both prevented the offloading of the cargo and the retreat of the Sally Ann to her home port, and the poor captain could do nothing but sit gloomily in the pub, drinking uselessly as the demurrage fees continued to mount.
6. canty — (Scots) cheerful, lively
Ay! it’s true she were a canty little thing, your mother were, when she were still working as a tapster at the Pork and Gristle.
7. lurcher — crossbred dog (traditionally of collie with greyhound) favored by poachers for catching rabbits
His longhaired lurcher stood attentive at the tree bole, waiting only for a sign from his master, an unkempt fellow who eyed both of us suspiciously.
8. fosse — ditch, trench; defensive moat used around a fortification
The veteran mercenaries looked disgusted at the poor state of the keep’s defenses, the fosses so poorly kept that weeds grew profusely throughout, providing traction and quick access for any enemy seeking to cross the now-shallow trench.
9. personalty — personal goods, personal estate, personal belongings
The misuse of civil forfeiture by the police has made a mockery of the protections given to property in our society, as anyone even peripherally connected to any crime may see his or her entire personalty—and even in some cases real estate as well—taken from them on the mere assertion by police that it was involved in the crime itself.
10. bathos — ludicrous descent from sublime to the small; triviality of style
Certainly the Son of God had prostitutes among his closest followers, but is it not the depth of bathos to defend paying hush money to porn stars in His name?
Bonus Vocabulary
(American, from 1890s)
ice-cream suit — man’s light suit of white, or light pastel
I’m sure he thought he looked quite resplendent in his ice-cream suit, panama hat, and dark glasses, but he looked less like Leon Redbone and more like a fat Wayne Newton about to fleece his faithful flock.
As long as he remained in his chair nobody could see how he had bodged the rip in the seat of his pants, leaving a pleat along the center seam.
2. malefic — producing evil, baleful
Being snubbed at the party had a malefic effect upon his judicial rulings.
3. bint — (British) derogatory term for girl or woman
“No, she won’t be helping with the food—I gave one hard look at the bint and she ran away!”
4. ecchymosis — discoloration from extravasated blood beneath the skin
The purplish ecchymosis of a deep bruise will fade to a yellowish green as the hemoglobin is broken down by the body into biliverdin and bilirubin.
5. gralloch — to remove the viscera from game, usu. a deer
By the time I returned with our camp buckets filled from the stream, Jerry had already gralloched the whitetail and was beginning to assemble the fire.
6. canting arms — (also allusive or punning arms) (heraldry) coat of arms in which charges make visual play on the bearer’s name or title
The arms of President Eisenhower stretched the idea of canting arms still further, with a blue anvil somehow supposed to evoke the German word ‘eisenhauer’, though this means ‘iron worker’ rather than ‘anvil’.
7. canting — affecting piety, often hypocritically
For all his strident, whining, canting devotion to Marx, the professor remains a true capitalist at heart.
8. canting — using thieves’ slang
I understood most of the carny’s canting words, but had to ask just what a ‘moll dip’ was.
9. sternutatory — causing sneezing
I have never found snuff to have as strong a sternutatory effect as ground black pepper, but his blend always made me sneeze violently, crying all the while.
10. fulvous — dull yellowish-brown, tawny
Viewing the cougar at this distance through the binoculars, I could appreciate her beauty, the strong feline muscles beneath her fulvous coat, her massive paws treading lightly across the rock-strewn hillside.
1. tagger (HT to Steve Skaar) — one who tags; device for tagging (sheep, merchandise, etc.); graffitist
Most variants of the game have a ‘no tag-backs’ rule of some sort, so that the tagger can not immediately become the taggee.
2. dorter — dormitory, esp. in a monastery
I had been so nervous the previous night, creeping as quietly as possible past the dorter, only to realize this morning that at least half of the monks had been up and about at the same time.
3. maidan — open space near or in a town; parade ground
Rogers was found with the other horsemen playing polo on the maidan, cutting a fine figure on his chestnut stallion.
4. astonied — (archaic) stunned; dazed
The Green Knight was astonied to behold the two of them riding peaceably together upon Sir Spender’s gray charger, she riding sidesaddle behind the tall warrior.
5. enkindle — to make to blaze up; to set on fire
There was no single moment that enkindled her ardor, rather a succession of moments, a series of sweet kindnesses and fiery actions that built her passion into an unquenchable flame.
6. distaff — stave used to hold unspun fiber during spinning; women; female side of a family; female heir
The pretensions of the Soviet would have you believe that all were equal in the party, but I noted that the distaff side of the delegation were relegated to menial and clerical work while the men performed the hard labor of negotiation and attendance at working dinners.
7. eulogium — speech or writing praising some person or thing
Once more we were forced to endure a eulogium on the intelligence and correctness of our supervisor, which, as always, would have carried more weight had it been delivered by someone other than the supervisor himself.
8. nestle-cock — last or weakest hatchling in a brood; spoilt child
Dorian barely survived the whooping cough and had been doted upon by his mother since, becoming such a nestle-cock in consequence that he proved unable to endure any difficulty whatsoever.
9. sough — to sigh, to murmur, to make a rushing or murmuring sound
The wind soughed through the willows while I lay beneath its branches with my eyes closed listening to each shifting breeze playing through the leaves.
10. optative — of verb mood expressing wish or desire
I boldly asserted I would become a world-famous stenographer, showing my youthful grasp of optative expression, but little realizing that my lack of subjunctive mastery was already all too obvious.
