Friday Vocabulary

1. thirl — to pierce, to drill

To signify his acceptance by the tribe they thirled a hole through his right nostril, and he ever after wore there a ring of gold as a token of that day.

 

2. sallow — of pale sickly yellow color, esp. of skin

Since last I had seen her, Vera’s features had taken on that sallow tone which often betokens an incipient collapse of health.

 

3. bosky — of or related to bushes or shrubs; bushy, covered or shielded by low foliage; shady

In that bosky bower hidden from the gaze of men and animals alike we made love for the first time.

 

4. subparallel — almost but not quite parallel

Along the glacier’s path of retreat we find several subparallel ridges along with exposed quartzite deposits.

 

5. majolica — glazed earthenware decorated in opaque color

Atop the mantle stood an urn of offensive green majolica which Aunt Bertha had brought back from her trip to London, and which I had assumed as a child contained the ashes of dear departed Uncle Trent, though I later learned how wrong I was.

 

6. stipple — to shade (a picture, etc.) by marking with small dots

Even after his shave Rupert’s chin was stippled by the roots of his dark beard, giving him a swarthy mien.

 

7. chiliocosm — [Buddhist] grouping of many worlds

The thousand worlds which comprise the smallest chiliocosm are envisaged as having exactly the same structure, the same geography, and, of course, the same dependence upon the Law of Karma.

 

8. febricule — [obsolete] very mild fever

The doctor diagnosed a febricule caused by imbalanced blood, and prescribed a posset admixed with rosemary.

 

9. psychopomp — spirit or person who guides souls to the land of the dead

Stepping into that flat-bottomed boat in the sultry Okefenokee night, I felt as if I were about to leave the land of the living, and that Po’ Rob had become a psychopomp taking me across the swamp to the other world, and I hoped there’d be fewer mosquitoes in that nether hell.

 

10. hyaline — transparent, glassy

When I reached out to touch it, I was startled to realize that the entire creature was covered from snout to tail with a hyaline surface, a membrane so clear and transparent that I still could not detect visually.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(Scots (specific to Shetland and Orkney))

soothmoother — outsider

Since I was a soothmoother they tried to slow their speech down, but I could no more understand them than I would have an old couple conversing in Linear B.

 

1100 Books

I just now finished my 1100th book since I started keeping track, way back in 2015.

My 1100th book (not counting comics and books of the graphic novel type) was The Sensuous Dirty Old Man by Dr. “A”, a pseudo-pseudonym for Isaac Asimov. It’s a funny little throwaway humor book capitalizing on the (then) popularity of a whole slew of books on sex that were appearing on bookshelves of the non-yellow variety at the cusp of the 1970s, but particularly the books The Sensuous Woman and The Sensuous Man, respectively ‘authored’ by “J” and “M”. I say ‘throwaway’, and many of the jokes are silly, only a half-step above other books in the humor section meant to be read once and … well, thrown away. But Asimov’s wit is pretty wise and clever, in spite of his punotropism. And his introductory chapters, on “Becoming An Old Man” and “Becoming A Dirty Old Man” are brilliant examples of written humor, which is, in my opinion, the most difficult writing of them all. The book as a whole, I should warn you, is sexist—as one might guess from the very title—was sexist even by the standards of its time. And Asimov himself was reputed to be just such a wannabe-rake as the hero of this book. But … well, it’s all in good fun, and the closing chapter lets us all in on the secret.

In this last set of a hundred books, once again, I’ve been reading a lot of mysteries, though the number is down to 35% (31% if we count the comics I read). I should note that this number is comparative to the set of books read in the hundred before the hundred before this last one, as I pledged not to read mysteries for that last set. Science Fiction had the next most volumes read in the latest hundred, with 12 of that ilk. I read the same number of comic books during this last set of one hundred, though, as I said, I don’t count those towards each century of ‘books read’.

My reading pace was slower than the last hundred, though still a pretty good pace. It took 205 days to read this last century, as opposed to 165 or so days for the previous set. Not so many kids’ books this last hundred made the difference. The absolute pace, however, is also slower, in that I read around 131 pages per day this last set, while the previous hundred I read at a pace of 137.5 pages per day. (The gap isn’t quite as wide if we discount the comics, and I’ll note as well that this last tranche includes a re-reading of Tony Hillerman’s People Of Darkness to compare the original source material with the AMC miniseries (the latter not coming off favorably, to my mind), which I did not include in the counting of books up to one hundred, though I am counting those pages. (Originally the Hillerman book was Book Read #95 in this silly tracking project of mine.))

   1 Book per 2.05 Days   

I’ve just about given up ever getting around to making up some data post for y’all, given that I have a few other (quite silly) irons in the fire already, and I’m often too tired after work. Ah, well.

Friday Vocabulary

1. orthoepy — study of pronunciation; correct pronunciation

No matter how many times he was told that pronouncing ‘Jacobean’ as if accented on the second syllable with a long ‘o’ was not correct orthoepy, Yakov insisted upon mispronouncing it so, until it became a sort of proud talisman of error for the staunch Pynchonophile.

 

2. haver — to be indecisive, to hem and haw; to natter, to chatter

And worse even than his dull and lifeless hair was his havering inconstancy, the fact that you couldn’t be sure he’d turn up when he said he would and that half the time he’d have trouble expressing pleasure at your company when he did.

 

3. eo ipso — [Latin] by that very fact, thereby

Bringing Lacan up in casual conversation eo ipso signals that the speaker is a very deep thinker, very deep indeed, and that others need do little save make small signs of wonder at the brilliance which it shall be their pleasure to endure.

 

4. suasion — act of persuading or influencing

One of the most important aspects of suasion, as the ancient teachers of rhetoric emphasized, is to know your audience.

 

5. morphew — mark or blemish on skin, esp. a blister caused by scurvy

Most will not get near enough to smell her vile breath, warned off by her evil visage, the pustules and morphews that cover her face and arms like Satan’s own spotted livery.

 

6. chastise — to punish; to castigate, to criticize severely

Though I felt chastised enough by the sad look Mother gave me when I returned home, still I had to suffer through a painful hour with Papa as he ranted at me about the consequences of the foolish act I’d committed.

 

7. cottar (also cotter) — [Scots] peasant living in a cottage in exchange for service

“He’s no more ambition than is right for a cottar: to make straight furrows, to plant his seeds well, and to have a glass of ale at week’s end.”

 

8. conurbation — metropolis, large urban area formed from expansion of several cities into each other

The cost of modernizing the railway throughout the conurbation proved to be prohibitive, requiring as it did both a high tax burden and the wholesale destruction of large swathes of old communities.

 

9. foremother — female ancestor; female predecessor

One of the most important foremothers of the women’s rights movement, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, died nearly two decades before the United States belatedly passed the 19th Amendment.

 

10. stannary — [British] of or related to tin mining

Lewes found evidence to support his contrarian views in, of all places, the records of the Welsh stannary courts, citing several cases from the late 18th Century.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. polysemy — quality of word, sign, phrase, or concept having multiple (often similar) meanings

Translation is made even more difficult, of course, by the ingrained polysemy present in every human language—with the possible exeception of some artificial, invented tongues.

 

2. hymeneal — of marriage; of the hymen

Not until he saw the overtaut muscles of the bride as she hurled her bouquet towards the gathered maidens did Mr. Robertson realize how overwhelmingly important to his formerly spinster cousin had been this grand hymeneal performance.

 

3. irriguous — [archaic] well-watered

From the moment he came through the final pass and beheld before him the lush green irriguous valley he was decided that this was where he would make his home.

 

4. impudically — immodestly

He wandered out into the corridor dragging his IV pole with him, uncaring that his light hospital robe barely came down to his thighs and that his bottom was impudically revealed behind him as strode angrily to the nurses’ station.

 

5. canorous — musical, melodious, resonant

As I sat on the stone bench in the box-like chamber I thought of Ron’s canorous voice, and wondered again at how his poor impulse control had gotten me into this fix.

 

6. tetany — medical condition characterized by involuntary muscular spasms

But as I glanced back I caught upon her face a horrid almost devilish look of pure hate, as if some psychic tetany had overwhelmed Georgette’s heretofore perfectly polite interest in my news and had revealed in its shuddering spasm the seething antipathy within her soul towards me and my fiancée.

 

7. hight — [archaic] named, called

“How be ye hight, then, ye stranger whose arrival comes so timely?”

 

8. compend — summary, epitome, compendium

But most important were the four handwritten compends he had made of all the experiments and their results, with his notes outlining further ideas for future research.

 

9. hassock — thick pillow usu. used for kneeling at prayer; cushion used as a seat, ottoman

I found her in the sitting room, darning a worn spot in a hassock for the vicar.

 

10. lumme — [British] expressing surprise

“Lumme, but you’re a cool customer,” he said as he slowly folded the knife and put it back in his jacket pocket.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(psychology)

Electra complex — psychoanalytic concept in which a girl competes with her mother for possession of her father

Plath herself confessed that her famous poem Daddy is about a woman with an unresolved Electra complex.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. infandous — of that which should not be told; odious in the extreme, horrid

I shuddered and steeled myself once more to descend those irregular stairs and enter the wretched basement where Jeremiah had spent the last days of his tortured life, to gaze once more upon the infandous figures in the charcoal drawings covering the damp walls, wherein he had essayed to depict the demons that haunted his dreams and perhaps, at the end, even his waking hours.

 

2. ophidian — of or related to snakes

Carson kept his legs beneath the blankets and wrenched his body around with an almost ophidian writhing turn as he wrenched himself to look at me and the doctor.

 

3. objective tinnitus — noise heard within the ear which can also be heard by another (usually through an instrument such as a stethoscope)

Though most would assume that objective tinnitus is simply a much louder form of the annoying ringing in the ears which plagues so many, in fact it is usually caused by the sound of blood rushing through vessels near the ear canal, and presents itself to both the sufferer and the observer as a rushing or ‘whooshing’ sound.

 

4. chifforobe — furniture piece with both drawers and a rod for hanging clothes

The old chifforobe‘s front doors had never completely closed, because the socket at the bottom was somehow offset from true center.

 

5. punter — [slang] person, esp. a customer; prostitute’s client; bettor

Padraic insisted that the peanut bowls always be filled to the brim, to keep the punters happy, as he always added.

 

6. jehu — [colloquial] fast driver, often furiously so; cabman

Our jehu proved equal to the task, and within a rather hair-raising fifteen minutes we found ourselves at Paddington Station.

 

7. foehn — dry warm wind blowing downhill in the Alps, esp. in Switzerland

Happy to feel both the foehn and the sun on his face, Hans walked briskly up the path to tend to his father’s cows.

 

8. wimple — medieval head covering for women formed from cloth over the head draped around the neck

Much of religious garb has its roots in the Middle Ages, such as the wimple still worn by most nuns, once a sign of higher class status among medieval women.

 

9. dithyrambic — extremely excited or emotional, frenzied, impassioned

Usually the most staid and perhaps boring of orators, St. Jean reached dithyrambic heights of impassioned speechifying as he reached the end of his peroration, pleading with all and sundry to fully support the new bypass.

 

10. mestizo — mixed race person, esp. a Latin American or Filipino with both native and European ancestry

Before the war, most Spaniards looked down upon the mestizos, even the very wealthy merchants with fine homes in Manila.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(British slang)

banjo — to beat, to knock down, to thrash

The three miscreants caught their former teacher in the stadium stairwell and banjoed him mercilessly.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. loosestrife — common name of flowering plants of two distinct genera: Lythrum and Lysimachia

So many flowers fall under the general rubric of the loosestrifes that it is often unclear which is meant, as—for example—the scarlet pimpernel from which the famous hero took his name, which is one of over two hundred plants bearing the name loosestrife.

 

2. pyretic — related to, causing or caused by fever

But this sort of pyretic philosophy has always been popular among college freshmen (emphasis on men) and latecomers to deep thought who believe they are the first to explore ideas about the nature of things.

 

3. postulate — axiom; supposedly obvious assumption used as basis for argument

Of course, one can see Euclid’s Fifth Postulate as a bellwether for the vast changes that were to occupy turn-of-the-century mathematics, with Non-Euclidean Geometries only one of the first domains now captured by Functional Analysis.

 

4. risaldar (also rissalder, ressaldar) — Indian calvary rank of a native commander of a horse regiment

The mustachioed risaldar looked doubtful, but as I held the Queen’s commission, he held his tongue.

 

5. circumquaque — roundabout speech or writing

He provided as apology before the actual work his own circumquaque pretending to take offense at the author’s ideas that he was publishing, thus hoping to deflect the inevitable attacks and censorship which, indeed, followed immediately after he distributed the tendentious pamphlet.

 

6. warrener — professional keeper or hunter of rabbits

No man besides the warrener saw the passage of the horsemen, and he saw them only darkly in the distance as he guarded his pens from foxes that moonless night.

 

7. manticore — legendary beast with human face on the body of a lion and the tail of a scorpion or dragon

“Do not be fooled by his very human, very charming bearded face, my young apprentice, for the manticore has an insatiable hunger for flesh, for human flesh, and it is not a cannibal appetite but rather the monstrous bestiality of this vile creature that drives him, in spite of his honeyed words.”

 

8. clapper bridge — old style of bridge in which large stone slabs are laid across a creek or river, usually on stone piers

The violence of the river in spate had pushed off one of the schist slabs from the clapper bridge leading to the abbey, so the oxcarts had to take a long detour to the ford further down by Withinex.

 

9. compere — [British] master of ceremonies

When I was chosen as compere of my retiring boss’s roast, I had no idea how many drunken idiots I would have to ride herd on that long, long night.

 

10. gaiter — lower leg covering worn over boot; covering for ankle and instep

Presby wrote an entire monograph upon the uselessness of gaiters as military footwear, unfortunately not realizing that the Colonel’s brother-in-law was supplying the same for the entire Army of the West.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(British military food slang, WWI era)

Zepp — sausage

We ate well, two Zepps in a cloud, that is, two sausages on a ‘cloud’ of mashed potatoes.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. toerag (also toe-rag) — [British colloquial] worthless or despicable person; vagrant

But I’m not about to be made to feel guilty by some toerag whose problems are all his own.

 

2. noddle — [British] the head

This job’s not a very good use of your fine old noddle, now is it?

 

3. reredorter — privy in medieval monastery

I made my way through the steady rain to the reredorter, where it seemed all of the brethren had gathered, perhaps upset in the same way I had been by the cook’s daunting stew.

 

4. pomo — [slang] postmodern

And then Fincham-Smythe came out with some pomo Marxist twaddle that I thought we’d all said good riddance to when the new millennium arrived.

 

5. sucket fork — eating utensil with spoon bowl on one end of the stem and two- or three-tined fork on the other, used for eating sweetmeats

It seems strange that the fork was the last of our three primary pieces of silverware to come into common use, with only specialized versions before our modern era—such as the sucket fork beloved by the Tudors—but earlier eaters were quite content to use their fingers for most of the purposes we put our forks to.

 

6. malapert — impudent, overly saucy

I’ll take no such words from a malapert serving wench who no better knows her place than to take such umbrage at the master’s will.

 

7. sobriquet — nickname

His sobriquet, “the Petty”, derived from the possibly apocryphal account of the would-be king’s dunning of his tax collectors with questions about every divergence from projected revenues, to the point where his finance minister, the Bishop Polprêtre, resigned (or rather, attempted to resign) in pretended disgust.

 

8. criminator — [archaic] accuser, calumniator

Thus did my own feelings become criminators against my own spouse, so troubled had I been by the knowing looks and diffident words of my fellows.

 

9. veronica — bullfighting pass in which matador swings his muleta before the bull while keeping his legs perfectly still

With a passable veronica I grabbed the boy off his bike just as it passed in its pell-mell descent and held him safely as his vehicle flew into and over the railing just on the other side of the roadway, to fall in an agony of metal and rubber onto the rocks below.

 

10. groat — very old English coin of silver, worth four pennies

Though the groat was taken from circulation in the 17th Century, it is still minted as one of the Maundy coins.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(derogatory military slang)

Rupert — junior officer

He had the serene self-confidence and total lack of situational awareness that epitomized most of the Sandhurst Ruperts I had contact with during that sweltering summer campaign.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. erudite — having or showing lots of knowledge or learning

But this sort of erudite reasoning is hardly to the point when we’re merely trying to decide where to build the outhouse.

 

2. gleeman — wandering singer (in medieval era)

But the roles were not always thought of as separate in those times, and the term ‘juggler’ (or ‘jongleur‘) might be used of dancers, actors, acrobats, or gleemen.

 

3. skewiff (also skewwhiff or skew-whiff) — [Australian colloquial] askew, awry, out of line

You could tell Andy had started drinking earlier than usual that day, as his furrows became a bit skewiff at the back of the field.

 

4. aubade — song or poem in honor of the dawn

His plans to serenade (of course, that is the wrong word) his sweetheart with a lovely aubade at daybreak were devastated when he saw by the new-breaking sun’s light his rival descending furtively from her window.

 

5. scamp — to perform in a slipshod or careless way

And that trivial incident was the beginning of the end of his usefulness to the firm, as from that day on Pauley seemed to discard all his previously held habits of industriousness and high business ethics, becoming tardy and often absent altogether, taking ever longer breaks, scamping his work whenever he could.

 

6. rear-vassal — vassal of a vassal, feudal tenant of one who held his own fief from a greater lord or the king

But these gains only applied to the great dukes and barons, and neither the villeins nor the rear-vassals can have noticed much if any difference in their daily lives.

 

7. dissipate — to disperse; to squander, to waste; to lose energy through conversion to heat

By this point, however, the young lord had dissipated his inheritance by his wastrel lifestyle, and most of the lands in question were already under lien or had been sold outright to his many creditors.

 

8. scone — [Australian slang] to hit on the head

“Well, it’s not like I expected to be sconed by my son’s English teacher, is it?”

 

9. Weltschmerz — world-weariness, sorrowful depression over the state of the world and one’s portion in life

Then, like many a young lad before him, he cast aside the memories of his unhappy love affair, returned from his voyage to resume his duties at the bank, renounced his affected attitude of Weltschmerz, and gave up his naïve ideas of becoming a poet and got on with his life.

 

10. lintel — horizontal beam across the top of a door or window

There above the lintel we saw the same red teardrop of wood that we’d seen in several other houses in this benighted village.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(Australian slang)

dob — to inform on someone, to tell authorities of another’s wrongdoing; to be selected for an unwanted job

Everyone knew Alice had dobbed him in to the school because Cliff wouldn’t give her drugs anymore.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. usufruct — right to benefit and profit from a property without actual ownership nor the right to destroy, diminish, or alienate said property

Though initially the usufruct of the lands granted to the vassal reverted to the lord upon the former’s death, within a short span of years the fief became hereditary.

 

2. banal — unoriginal or common in a boring fashion

Though each freshman philosophy student brings forth his or her ‘insights’ as if these thoughts were the most original in the world, to the poor professor (or more likely an adjunct), each fall brings the same banal and foggy notions that she will grind her teeth to hear once more.

 

3. secular — worldly, as opposed to spiritual; of or related to laypeople or civil law, as opposed to clerical or religious; of clergy not belonging to a monastic order

It is all very well and good to claim that one shall leave the secular world, that one shall devote life and energy only to the higher things, to the spiritual plane upon which God’s truth must be found, but human flesh must have sustenance, and human emotions can only be throttled or channeled but not completely denied.

 

4. pourboire — tip

After the war, though most waiters were satisfied by whatever small change was left after you paid the bill, I never met a taxi driver who would not become indignant if you forgot his pourboire on top of the fare.

 

5. agnomen — fourth name given to some Roman citizens in addition to the praenomen, nomen, cognomen; nickname

The terrifying agnomen by which Caligula is known to history was of course originally only a laughing reference to the little boots he wore as a pretend soldier when he came as a small child with his father Germanicus to the front.

 

6. timeserver — person putting in minimal effort at work, due to burnout or closeness to retirement age; one who conforms to the opinions of those in power

Like most timeservers, Jacoby complained mightily when he was passed over for promotion, though he had of course never done more than the bare minimum in his job before.

 

7. gomeril (also gomeral, gomerel) — [Scots] fool

This sort of thing might dupe that whole tent full of gomerils down on the green, but I’m not taken in one bit.

 

8. catadromous — of animals which migrate from freshwater to the sea in order to spawn

For years it was believed that eels were the only catadromous fish, but a very few catadromous herring and anchovy species have been discovered.

 

9. mollify — to appease, to pacify; to reduce a burden; to soften

But promises and pledges could not mollify the angry crowd, and the government official began scanning the room for the most likely exit.

 

10. livid — furious; dark gray-blue

Mr. Portzweebie had become quite upset as the new conditions of his lease were explained to him, finally becoming so livid that he could no longer even speak, at which point the landlord decided the best option was to hurriedly take his leave.