Friday Vocabulary

1. defecate — [obsolete] made pure, clarified; spiritually or morally purified

Thus may defecate reason attain an even greater appreciation of more universal truth in forging with faith an antinomy stronger than mere material science.

 

2. anorak — [UK slang] obsessive fan, esp. of trains

He’s a total anorak about 2000 AD and especially Starlord, so don’t you dare bring up Guardians of the Galaxy.

 

3. epoche (also epoché) — suspended judgment; cessation of action

But when the calm ataraxia of the Pyrrohnists becomes only the epoche which surrenders all action whatsoever, one may well question the value of this extreme Skepticism.

 

4. cordyceps (often capitalized) — [biology] parasitic fungus attacking arthropods

But like a fruiting cordyceps taking over a colony of spiders, these AI-generated visions absorbed all the energy, time, and devotions of these new devotees, who became merely agents for the further spread of this technological parasitic excrescence.

 

5. blim — [UK slang] small piece of hashish

Somehow during all this I managed to get a blim hole in Tony’s jacket, which of course I didn’t notice when I returned it the next day, but of course he spotted it right away.

 

6. sarnie — [UK informal] sandwich

“You can’t live upon sarnies all week, and even if you can, I can’t and I insist you take me to a proper restaurant this very minute!”

 

7. seethe — [obsolete] to boil

The best cuts of the ram were well seethed with some local roots that the young Geoffrey found behind the abandoned monastery.

 

8. planticrub — [Shetland dialect] circular stone planter for cabbage or kale

Half the planticrubs were still in use while the other half lay wasted, torn asunder for building materials.

 

9. cockalorum — small-minded boaster, self-important person of little merit; boasting speech

But now the cockalorums call the tune and the rest of us are forced to dance and dance and dance until we drop dead from despair at their illimitable despoliations.

 

10. irreprehensible — blameless, innocent

Though his life before the wreck was not a model for youth, after the disaster his actions and his conduct were entirely irreprehensible.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(50s & 60s fashion by way of uncertain etymology from the meat sandwich)

Sloppy Joe — loose-fitting comfortable jumper or sweatshirt

I thought we were painting the gym so I’d dressed in my old dungarees and a gray Sloppy Joe that my big sister Lou had gifted me when she left for college.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. dingle — wooded valley

Below the prominence lay a dark dingle which formed a precipitous barrier to any invading force, a steep ditch formed by the stream that even when fordable during the dry days of summer, still had treacherous rocks aplenty to turn the hooves of cavalry and men.

 

2. dingle — [Antarctic slang] clement, having nice weather

It was a real dingle day and hopes were high, though Thomas at the weather desk told us sternly that another storm was in the offing.

 

3. assertoric — of a proposition which states fact neither self-evident nor merely possible

When AI makes assertoric descriptions of movies or books or legal cases which later we learn do not actually exist, we call these ‘hallucinations’; when human beings make the same claims, we call those ‘lies’.

 

4. frivol — to act in a silly manner

After the Lord Deacon and his daughter have departed, then you may frivol to your heart’s content, but until then I’ll thank you to behave like a gentleman of serious mien.

 

5. scalawag — scoundrel; Southerner who collaborated with Reconstruction forces after the Civil War

The locals think a scalawag to be a much worse person than a carpetbagger, because the former should know better, having had the fortune to be raised in God’s own country … though I should point out that many of His countrymen seem to be ignorant, irascible, impious idiots.

 

6. Klaberjass — two-handed trick-taking card game using a piquet deck with the Jack and nine of trumps as highest cards

Artie and the silent Dutchman settled down for a game of Klaberjass while I pretended to read while my mind kept racing and thinking of the thousand things that could go wrong with Bill’s plan.

 

7. winsome — charming, innocently inspiring and engaging

But now we come to the part where the old bosses adopted the tools of social media and ‘influencers’ to once more charm the masses, this time with a more winsome and winning fascism.

 

8. buttle — to act as a butler

Everyone knew he came from borstal rather than manor homes even though Jericho butled with the best of them for his master Lord Lairdly.

 

9. tussar (also tussah) — deep gold silk

The best saris are traditionally made from tussar, and are available in many rich colorful dyes.

 

10. trammel — to constrain, to hinder; to entangle, to snare

As Churchill points out, when sloth and fear trammel virtue, high-minded men are only prey for active and uncaring evildoers.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(supposed economic thing)

Kondratiev wave — long cycles in technological advancement that greatly affect the world economy

Even taking the period of the latest Kondratiev wave at the longest proposed span, the most strident advocates of the theory have to admit that the information technology cycle is likely to have passed its peak.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. hinky — behaving in a nervous manner; suspicious

Say what you want about interdepartmental lines of communication and all that, but the way the Secret Service acted makes the whole thing seem hinky to me.

 

2. gisant — [French] recumbent statue atop a grave representing the deceased

For decades after his death in fin de siècle Paris his manly vigor was so renowned that the bronze gisant over his tomb had a pelvic region shiny from the touch of desperate ones rubbing his likeness in hopes of gaining the potency of the deceased.

 

3. vaticinate — to prophesy, to predict the future

When all our profits and cultural gains are only promises of stockjobbers vaticinating the future of the latest ‘hot’ technology, one can only heed Carlyle’s advice to focus on the present day and its problems and opportunities.

 

4. break-bulk — of or related to non-containerized cargo, that is, cargo designated for multiple consignees which must be offloaded piecemeal at each port

It wasn’t a huge operation, nor a glamorous one, but my shipping line did have four small cargo boats running break-bulk loads into and out of ports all around the Java, Celebes, and Banda Seas.

 

5. chasuble — outer sleeveless garment worn over other priestly garments by the celebrant

We found three beautiful chasubles in the antique store, though no one could explain how they’d made their way to the resale market.

 

6. crossruff — to take tricks alternately in bridge, each winning partner leading a suit which the other trumps and so forth

Instead of good cop, bad cop, these two clowns tried to crossruff admissions from me by throwing out hypotheticals which the other shot down, so I figured they didn’t really need me there in the interrogation room for their routine, though they got offended when I told them so.

 

7. educt — to extract

At this point the slurry is driven through a dewatering screw press to educt the material for the final drying in the kiln.

 

8. ostension — demonstration, presentation; showing of the sacrament for adoration

Although ostension is one of the obvious theories for language acquistion—it seems obvious to learn the word ‘bird’ by having examples pointed out—it does not explain how blind children learn to talk almost as rapidly as their sighted peers.

 

9. shuttlewitted — scatterbrained, flighty

Quite frankly I’ve never heard before of such a responsible position being offered to such a callow shuttlewitted youth.

 

10. bandeau — headband; narrow strapless bra

Small though it was, even her tight bandeau no longer fit after her protracted illness.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(archaic British slang)

quod — to be imprisoned

Petey was a fine lad when he stuck to ale but when he got gin in him he always got quodded for fighting.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. withal — in addition, besides; nevertheless

He exhibited an irascible mien, yet Nicholas withal was a gentle soul at heart, ever ready to help the weak and downtrodden.

 

2. stadial — of or related to geological ages; of or related to stages of society, civilization, etc.

The 100-year anniversary of The Glorious Revolution saw both Tories and Whigs portraying the freedom of the press acquired almost by accident in 1695 as part of a grand stadial progression in the development of liberty from feudal times.

 

3. oblong — neither square nor circular, having length in one dimension greater than in another; elongated

Hidden in the barn’s shadow lying oblong across the paddock at day’s end was the injured fox.

 

4. bargee — worker on a barge

The naval board of enquiry found that the bargees should have dropped anchor without further instructions from the tug, given the quite visible (and audible) nature of the accident, as well as the long delay between the explosion and the collision.

 

5. amirial — of or related to an amir or emir

We are fortunate that photographs of several amirial households are still extant, so that Nelson’s hypothesis can be definitively disproven, and the original pen box theory sustained.

 

6. vlei — [South Africa] lowland marsh or flat lake, often appearing only seasonally

The bull nosed hopefully through the parched earth of the vlei, but at this time of year not even moist dirt could be found.

 

7. stylobate — [architecture] top platform (usu. of three) of the crepidoma, foundation upon which main structure is built; course of masonry upon which columns are placed

In the Classical Period dilithic stylobates became the norm, however, being both more economical and easier to build with in difficult terrain, which of course was often the case atop the hills of Greece where most of these temples were sited.

 

8. attrit — to wear down or erode (usu. by physical action); [military] to lose troops by engagement with larger forces or firepower

The many marble steps have been attritted by continual use going back to the 10th Century, so the modern visitor must be careful not to stumble on the now uneven stairs.

 

9. buckshee — [UK slang] extra, free

The rajah didn’t know that Reggie’s gone all Buddhist and vegetarian so there’s a buckshee steak we can split if you come by tonight after dark.

 

10. forcemeat — ground or sieved meat mixed with fat and sometimes flavoring or vegetables for use in various recipes

The delicate texture of the Mousseline forcemeat derives from the cream and eggs used in its preparation.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(geography)

Macaronesia — the four island groupings west of Gibraltar, consisting of the Azores, Madeira, the Canary Islands, and Cape Verde

Malvasia was originally grown in the Mediterranean and Macaronesia, but nowadays only Madeira wine acquires the ‘Malmsey’ label.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. taximeter — device for calculating cab fare by measuring distance traveled

We were fortunate to find a taximeter cab in that area and so were able to speed to the station before Bertram’s Daimler arrived.

 

2. hogget — not yet shorn sheep under one year old

Reilly was caught red-handed with two of Widow Janet’s hoggets in the back of his wagon.

 

3. punkin — pumpkin

Cy’s horse got in the punkins and there weren’t nary a one left.

 

4. lumber room — storeroom in domicile used for oddments and unused furniture

Whitby had last seen the trunk in the lumber room, but that was years ago, and he wasn’t even sure the map was still in that trunk anyway.

 

5. agrestal — of or related to plants wildly growing in cultivated fields

After the verdict, of course, the water dried up and now all that you see are a few agrestal weeds growing where there used to be rows of verdant crops.

 

6. chirographically — as related to penmanship

He tried new pens and new pencils and even bought a book on improving handwriting, but in the end Joel decided that he was just chirographically challenged.

 

7. thesicle — subthesis

These diversions and divagations may seem entertaining to you, but all these thesicles do not add up to even one single cogent argument about your supposed subject.

 

8. cruive — [archaic Scots] weir for catching salmon

We’ll just head down to the beck and check the cruive before going home.

 

9. drongo — [Australian slang] fool, dummy

He’s the sort of drongo who carries a penknife in case he has to write a sharp note.

 

10. fichu — triangular woman’s scarf

But it was the plummeting necklines which made the fichu an essential fashion accessory in the era of Marie Antoinette.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(military)

corporal’s guard — small detachment of soldiers; any small group

The incident began during the Christmas party, so there was only a corporal’s guard at the monitoring desk the first catastrophic failures.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. mim — [Scots & British] demure, primly reticent, pretentiously shy

Alice sat there hands folded in her lap, mim as can be, though now I know that even then she was scheming to foil all our plans and triumph by our ruin.

 

2. compossible — not inconsistent with some other assertion

As we feel our way towards the truth of things, I will only notice now that Danica’s claim was compossible with the officer’s testimony, if we allow for their different situations, the lighting and the fact that she saw the incident through the leaves of the beech trees.

 

3. mangel-wurzel (also mangelwurzel) — fodder beet

“I’d make a terrible yeoman farmer; I don’t know a mangel-wurzel from a mangonel.”

 

4. cellarage — area or space of a cellar; rent for use of cellar space

Prices were astronomical at that time, and he could afford not an apartment, but the merest cellarage, paying hundreds of dollars a month for space not twenty-five square feet, with a sloping dirt floor which was damp in the winter and bug-ridden in the summer.

 

5. argand — argand lamp, improved oil lamp developed in 18th Century by Aimé Argand

The introduction of the argand to U.S. lighthouses had the unfortunate consequence of delaying the adoption of the Fresnel lens.

 

6. stravaig — [Scots] to stroll, to walk about with no particular purpose

Willie was stravaiging along the path leading to the fen when he spied the parson up on the rise.

 

7. gilver — [Manx] gillyflower

The path was bordered by gilvers and fuchsias.

 

8. laloplegia — paralysis of speech organs

Without the botox treatment, the throat becomes more and more constricted and talking becomes increasingly difficult until finally complete laloplegia ensues.

 

9. steatorrhea — abnormal presence of fat in stool

Any steatorrhea will obviously raise questions of pancreatic function, though of course many other causes are possible.

 

10. carious — having cavities; rotten

The very bones of democracy are carious and just as foul a stench arises from the courts as from the legislature.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(UK slang)

wooden-top (also woodentop) — police officer in uniform

“Well that’s done it, then,” he said, getting up from the floor. “Let’s have a couple of wooden-tops in to keep out the crowd and I’ll call the SOCO.”

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. plonker — [UK slang] fool; penis; [outdated] item of unusually large size or girth

“He’s nice enough to his friends, I suppose, but he’s a right plonker with the ladies.”

 

2. Dannert wire — concertina wire, coiled barbed or razor wire

The village had shown their preparedness by removing all the street and road signs, and by the long coils of Dannert wire some alert alderman had had strewn all about the beach, which surprisingly made that destination no less inviting.

 

3. parp — [UK informal] horn sound; fart sound

This quiet interlude is suddenly interrupted by a trombone parp that hearkens back to the band’s beginnings as a novelty act.

 

4. didact — pedant, person inclined to teach others

Jones was a natural didact, meaning that you could hardly teach him a damn thing as he knew it all already.

 

5. introit — psalm read or sung at beginning of the Mass (particularly as the celebrant approaches the Eucharist); introduction

The choir took up the solemn introit specified for this holy day and I was moved in spite of myself.

 

6. antihelminthic (also anthelminthic) — of or related to destruction or expulsion of parasitic intestinal worms

In this region it is possible that the antihelminthic properties of ayahuasca are not among its least important.

 

7. barmkin — [Scots] protective wall built around castles, towers, and fortified farmhouses

But there was a weak point in the barmkin near the mill race where stones had been taken for needed repairs, the hope being that the narrow water might be enough should the reivers return.

 

8. lalochezia — using vulgar words to palliate stress or pain

At times my neighbor would go out to his car in street and merely sit in it, not going anywhere, and he would scream f-bombs and other curse words for several minutes, perhaps not realizing that the closed doors and windows couldn’t keep us neighbors from hearing his angry imprecations, and then, hopefully with this lalochezia providing some relief, he would quietly exit the vehicle, and just as silently re-enter his house to attend to whatever unknown incident had been the impetus for this bizarre ritual.

 

9. czardas — Hungarian dance with slow start and frenetic finish

At Kis-Körös we were entertained (if that is the word) by solemn men in red fezzes dancing a czardas while the train engineers attended to some mechanical issue which was never satisfactorily explained.

 

10. cantref — land division in medieval Wales

Each of these cantrefi had their own independent court, although in the case of Powys some of the commotes took on this role.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(US slang 1930s)

strictly from hunger (sometimes simply from hunger) — terrible, really bad, of poor quality; only acceptable faute de mieux, of a poor choice driven by imperious necessity

The little blonde singer was strictly from hunger, and I supposed that either Bill was tone deaf or he was getting a little something on the side. Maybe both, I don’t know.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. sebaceous — fatty; fat-producing

The wound revealed a sickly yellow sebaceous sac around some organ I could not identify.

 

2. chlamydeous — having floral parts, either calyx or corolla or both

Ah what chlamydeous wonders! Would the rose smell as sweet shorn of petals?

 

3. histology — study of biological tissues

“I can’t be certain until I get the results from Histology,” he said, “but I’m almost sure this is a case of aconite poisoning.”

 

4. tummler — gregarious activity director and emcee at Catskill Mountain resorts

Baird was a perfect tummler, lively enough to entertain, yet lacking the talent that would have detracted from the headliners.

 

5. onager — Asiatic wild ass; ancient rock-hurling siege weapon

The makeshift cords were already beginning to fray, and the onager we’d slapped together might fire only two more shots, three at most.

 

6. parataxic — emotionally unbalanced; not in harmony, unharmonious

And thus it was at this juncture, when the collapse of his romantic dreams had left him in this most parataxic state, that the commission entered his office to render their final judgment.

 

7. pindling — weak, puny

If it had not been beneath his dignity to ride the donkey, he would have chosen that stout beast rather than the pindling mare that was the only horse available.

 

8. exsert — to stick out

So hypnotized by those malevolent eyes was I that I hardly flinched as the fiendish serpent exserted its forked black tongue within inches of my face.

 

9. disadorned — bereft of ornaments

And now that the lights had been removed with some difficulty, shedding needles all about, the disadorned tree looked forlorn, waiting now only for its last journey to the city dump.

 

10. seisin — possession or right of possession of land or chattels

The judges agreed that seisin did appertain, even in the plaintiff’s minority, and thus the status of his villein could be abrogated.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. pants — [UK slang] terrible, of bad quality

“I don’t care if the whole village go there, it’s always been a pants pub with watery beer.”

 

2. dietrologia — [Italian] conspiracy theory, science of discerning hidden motives behind events

Everyone knew he’d been fired for stealing from the till, but Ben’s commitment to dietrologia was such that he remained convinced that he’d been set up, that his boss Remy had set him up in some convoluted plot to get back at her ex-husband, with whom Ben remained friendly, though in his cups Ben even alleged that his troubles stemmed from a conspiracy between both Remy and her ex.

 

3. bolshie — [UK slang] Bolshevik, communist; leftist

Even though the FBI had plenty of evidence he’d been passing secrets to the Soviets, the young physicist managed to emigrate to Britain where his bolshie bent didn’t prevent him from getting a position at Leeds University.

 

4. autofiction — blend of autobiography and fiction

And to think James Frey could have avoided all that trouble with Oprah if he’d just labeled his books as autofiction, though likely they wouldn’t have made as much money … which is, after all, the entire point of writing.

 

5. blazon — [heraldry] formal description of a coat of arms; coat of arms

By the time these quarterings had gotten to the point where a blazon might consist of sixty-four separate quartered shields, the whole point of coat of arms had gotten lost, as no one could determine what family was represented without consulting learned treatises.

 

6. anastasic — of or relating to resurrection

Perhaps her very name was responsible for the legend, though the many and separate anastasic reappearances of the last surviving Romanova made pecuniary motives more likely.

 

7. oast — drying kiln, esp. for hops

They uncovered articles of clothing—her shoes and a scarf—in one of the abandoned oasts at the north end of the island, but no other trace of Carly was ever found.

 

8. clothespress — cabinet or wardrobe for storing clothes

The fine wooden clothespress stood seven feet tall, which is the only reason his cousin hadn’t taken it with the rest of the furniture when Aunt Agatha passed away.

 

9. theretofore — previously

Such were the strictures under which the society had theretofore imposed a benign regulation of advertising and self-promotion.

 

10. gantlope — running the gauntlet as a form of military punishment

A 18th-Century manual for Prussian cavalry specifies that any soldier drunk on duty shall run the gantlope between 200 men ten times in a row.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(idiom)

short arms and deep pockets (also short arms and long pockets) — miserly

“Don’t bother asking him for naught, as Mr. High-and-Mighty has got short arms and deep pockets, and will tell you he didn’t get where he is today by giving all and sundry a handout.”

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. stridulate — to make a shrill grating, chirping, squeaking or similar sound by rubbing together body parts (e.g., as a cricket does)

The latex body suits made the grotesque couple fairly stridulate as they writhed in the heat of, for want of a better or at least more acceptable term, what Will could only call their passion.

 

2. exedra — room or recess, often semicircular, with a bench or benches where discussions can take place; such a bench

Tucked behind the bench in the exedra just to the right of the main church doors was a small brown leather bag, which was found to contain directions about paying the money, and for all his vaunted awareness, Timmy had to confess that he had spotted nobody even going near to the recess while he watched during the service.

 

3. hypotaxis — [grammar] subordination of a clause to another

“You can’t just say ‘While I’d like to stay…” and pause and expect me to play fill-in-the-blanks to your hypotaxis because you’re too diffident to stand up for yourself!”

 

4. feretory — reliquary; part of church where relics are kept

He had stolen the medicine cabinet from the home of this most beloved author before the bulldozers came in, and over the years it had become a feretory for the strange miscellanea of artifacts he collected at book signings and other public appearances: a discarded coffee stirrer, a leaky pen, a torn packet formerly containing ibuprofen.

 

5. chevauchee — calvary raid into enemy territory

Along these Scottish border lands the tradition of the chevauchee—although usually referred to by the more prosaic term ‘raids’—was so strong that it is believed the term was the etymological ancestor of the famous Chevy Chase.

 

6. pung — one-horse sleigh

Somehow it didn’t seem as romantic as she’d imagined, riding in the pung in the biting wind as the horse kicked up slushy snow which kept finding the crevices in the scarf she’d wrapped around her head and face.

 

7. solfeggio — do-re-mi system of learning notes of the scale

Winston never learned to read music and even the simplified solfeggio from The Sound Of Music left him painfully going through all the verses to find which note corresponded to ‘a drink with jam and bread’, and when Marnie told him about sharps and flats he simply gave it up as a lost cause.

 

8. nefandous — [archaic] execrable, appalling, unspeakable

You cannot commit such nefandous atrocities and then return to me with a mealy-mouthed apology asking for forgiveness.

 

9. groyne (also [US] groin) — breakwater

The first body was found caught in the pilings of the terminal groyne, which gave the detectives a pretty clear idea where the corpse had entered the water.

 

10. trenchant — incisive, cutting, biting

He rarely spoke in contradiction during these presentations, but the merest lift of an eyebrow as a junior executive made his case could be a more trenchant blow than any harsh words might have been.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(nautical)

slungshot (also slung shot) — weight attached to small cord used to cast lines from one place to another; similar device with shorter rope used as a weapon similar to a blackjack

These slavers would subdue the natives with a blow from a slungshot, but this time one of the pirates had struck with too much force, leaving only a corpse to be disposed of.