Educated Guesswork

1. impervious — not capable of being affected or influenced

Like all comic book heroes of the Golden Age, Jack Hardaway was impervious to doubt.

2. impermeable — not allowing fluids to pass through

His impermeable cape also protected him from prying eyes and suspicious minds.

3. gangly — awkwardly tall or thin

The gangly platform, towering high over the heads of the assembled crowd, looked as if it could not possibly support the weight of the hanged once they swung from the gallows.

4. al fresco — outside, in dining

As we sat enjoying our al fresco brunch, itinerant booksellers and free-marketeers of every stripe approached our table to hawk their wares and perhaps cadge a bite of bacon.

5. omnibus — archaic term for bus

The term ‘omnibus‘, from which the modern coinage ‘bus’ derives, stems from a hatter’s sign in Nantes, before which one of the first bus stops stood in 1823.

6. emblematic — symbolizing, representative

Pete found the seagull shit upon the totem’s peak emblematic of the oppression of Native American populations by the incursion of white settlers; his friends just found it guano.

7. vertiginous — likely to cause vertigo

The AMC Pacer skidded on the curves of the long gravel driveway during its vertiginous descent from the hermit writer’s cottage.

8. haberdashery — a retail establishment selling men’s accoutrements such as shirts, ties, gloves, and hats

To their dismay, the haberdashery had just sold out of top hats.

9. boggart — a malevolent household fairy in English folklore, frequently stealing small items and souring milk

Hanging a horseshoe above the door was supposed to prevent the boggart from entering a home.

10. fishmonger — a seller of seafood

Pike’s Market is one of the few places hiring female photogenic fishmongers.

1. apotropaic — intended to ward off evil

Before retiring in our quaint hotel room deep within vampire country, we placed crosses and apotropaic garlic before each window and upon the door.

 

2. gob — mouth

As the wrench slammed into his left elbow his right fist was lashing out, catching the attacker smack dab in his gob.

 

3. protreptic — intended to convince or instruct

Listening to the president’s protreptic oratory, Billy wondered if his Pizza Pockets were ready yet.

 

4. irrefragable — indisputable, undeniable

The collapse of the Twentieth Century into the first tenth of the Twenty-First took with it any lingering belief in irrefragable truths or standards of conduct.

 

5. jake leg — paralysis caused by drinking bootleg liquor made from denatured alcohol

Though the crippling effects of jake leg left a terrible scar upon communities during Prohibition, the condition became the inspiration for many wonderful blues songs.

 

6. decimate — to reduce by a tenth

The terrible battles and consequent famine of the Thirty Years’ War decimated the male population of Germany’s towns and villages, with some burgs losing well over 30% of their men in the carnage.

 

7. abstruse — hard to understand; recondite

The abstruse subject matter was made more difficult to understand by the professor’s discursive and tangential lectures.

 

8. ascend — to move upward

As the portly man began to ascend the stairs into the attic, a steamer trunk tossed from above knocked him back to the hallway floor.

 

9. burgee — a triangular flag or one having a triangular indentation leaving two tails

The yachts were resplendant on the water, flying flags, pennants, and burgees in the particolor code of the sea.

 

10. hyperopia — farsightedness

The coke-bottle lenses in photographs of James Joyce give testimony to the author’s severe hyperopia.

1. interest — a cause or business in which a person has a share

The conflicting interests between the king and the nobles initiated the events which culminated in the French Revolution.

 

2. purview — area of expertise

Standard & Poor’s insistence that the United States must immediately reduce its debt seems beyond its purview of judging whether the nation will pay off that debt in future years.

 

3. criterion — standard of judgment

One wonders if S&P applied the same criterion when it rated as triple-A the worthless home loan instruments that led to the financial catastrophe of 2008.

 

4. wayward — driven by willful deviation from norms to gratify one’s own desires

The wayward idiocies of politicians are often seen as conspiratorial, but more often are cases of naked self-interest winning out over any other values — if such still exist.

 

5. staggering — overwhelming, unbelievable

The number of staggering events in recent U.S. history seems to increase at an exponential rate, as constitutional crises dehisce from Watergate to Iran-Contra to the Lewinsky Affair to a very strange compulsion to war with Iraq, and we grow accustomed to the idea that people begging for money at every intersection is no concern of ours, that school teachers’ pensions cause our states’ financial problems, that CEOs making 130 times their employees’ wages just makes good business sense, that patents and copyrights are commodities to be traded like baseball cards rather than measures to protect actual creativity, as politicians lose office for sexual dalliances while spending (and receiving) hundreds of millions with each campaign, but I date the collapse of our civilization to the moment in time when we as a society somehow decided that it would be a good idea to have doctors and lawyers advertise as does any old cracker company.

 

6. inadvertent — unintentional; heedless

Forcing the king’s hand by encouraging the call for the Estates General, the French nobility had no inkling of the inadvertent consequences of their power play against Louis XVI.

 

7. maelstrom — a turbulent or tumultuous situation; a violent whirlpool

The Sun King’s son famously said, “After me, the deluge”, and the flood that washed away l’Ancien Régime plunged France and especially Paris into a seething maelstrom from which not all escaped.

 

8. chirography — handwriting

What visionary or prophet, what evaluator of questioned documents can read the chirography on our culture’s wall?

 

9. laggard — sluggish; dilatory

We may question our own laggard response to the rats gnawing into our finger bones, until we pick our teeth and see the foreign sinew between our own canines.

 

10. refractory — stubbornly disobedient

Ovid highlighted our refractory human nature, when he said “Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor“.

1. uffish — “a state of mind when the voice is gruffish, the manner roughish, and the temper huffish” [Lewis Carroll]

Our path into the bar was blocked by an uffish oaf who, claiming some sort of rôle as a bouncer, sought to gainsay our entry.

 

2. tympany — swelling of the bowels caused by a build up of gas in the intestines

The political flatus has grown so rapidly that Washington is threatened by an explosive tympany of casuistry, equivocation, and rationalization.

 

3. idiolect — an individual’s particular speech pattern

The idiolects of graduate students, particularly in the humanities, become so specialized that they grow all but incomprehensible to others not mired in the same field of study.

 

4. futilitarian — someone who believes that hope is useless

Though trouble seems always to haunt the strivings of the human race, and the cannibals are often at the gates, I refuse to turn futilitarian.

 

5. gelotophobia — fear of being the object of laughter

As they gathered around the piano, laughing at his putrid playing of “Chopsticks”, Andy felt his gelotophobia recrudescing, in spite of Dr. Whalen’s three-year course of reverse aversion therapy.

 

6. devolve — to be passed from one to another

As his parole officer arrested Tommy for another silly violation — something to do with a dog, a needle, and open containers — Renée realized that the care and feeding of Tommy’s pet skunk had suddenly devolved upon her.

 

7. appanage — a customary accompaniment

Cheese or mustard, or even both together, is the appanage of tasteless chili in certain parts of the South.

 

8. import — meaning; significance

The import of his frenzied motions, his hands clutching violently at his throat while his lips began to turn blue, was clear: he did not like the chili.

 

9. bole — tree trunk

A small, rusty casket lay beneath the bole of the elm, uncovered after the tree’s death at the hands of the Dutch.

 

10. slough — a state of profound despair [pronounced “sloo”]

And so sliding through addiction into a slough of bleak inanition, Jim finally found himself staring out over the precipice into the utter blackness, willing the darkness to take his misery once and for all.

1. ceteris paribus — with all other things remaining the same

A fifty percent decrease in income for those earning over five million dollars per annum, ceteris paribus, would have little to no effect on the world as a whole.

 

2. notaphily — the study or collecting of paper money

The introduction of the Euro was a sad moment for notaphily, as the ecosystem of currency was sharply reduced.

 

3. meddlesome — interfering or intrusive

And perhaps we would have gotten away with it, in the end, were it not for those meddlesome kids and their fire-breathing robot from the future.

 

4. insidious — secretly sinister

The proliferation of bad television shows is part of an insidious attempt to make us pay more attention to commercials.

 

5. paronomasia — the use of a word in different senses for specific effect; a pun

As the blade fell and he closed his eyes for the last time, he wondered again if the name “Beaver Cleaver” was a conscious paronomasia on the part of the writers.

 

6. pilcrow — paragraph mark

Reading the article in Rolling Stone magazine was difficult, as instead of new lines and tabs the paragraphs were separated by pilcrows.

 

7. dower — natural gift

The unaffected smile is the real dower of young children.

 

8. respite — a period of relief

The need for Ultraman to fly to the sun to re-energize gave the monster a brief respite from the robot hero’s attacks.

 

9. trituration — the reduction of a substance to a fine powder

The hopeful presidential candidates were all too eager to undergo the trituration of the media.

 

10. vermifuge — a medicine which expels worms or other parasites from the intestines

Term Limit laws are a worthless placebo, not the strong vermifuge needed to rid Congress of the infestation.

Note: Today’s vocabulary comes from my high school days, an actual English assignment I turned in one week, lo, oh-so-many years ago. My apologies

1. intrepid — dauntless

The intrepid explorer carefully circuited around the yellow patch of snow as he neared the pole’s barber shop on his maggot-driven sled.

 

2. labyrinth — maze

Corn in ancient times was so precious that indians used to hide it in a labyrinth, which is how it got the name maize.

 

3. nomad — wanderer

The hungry nomads were forced to kill their transportation and eat the red, meaty camel guts.

 

4. ostentatious — intended to attract notice

He wore a pendant in the shape of a flaming cross, an ostentatious symbol of his membership in the Audubon Society.

 

5. paradox — one whose character is inconsistent

He entered the girl’s restroom, and the way that the toilet seat was up struck him as a curious paradox to what he had expected.

 

6. pathos — the quality that arouses feelings of sympathy

To arouse pathos and public support for himself, the presidential candidate ordered his wife killed by having her eaten by a titmouse.

 

7. pensive — engrossed in serious, quiet reflection

He sat in pensive thought as he tried to determine which of the six beauties deserved the $1.98.

 

8. poignant — painful and afflicting

After the furor had died down, he was overcome with a poignant realization that he would never beat his wife again; she was dead.

 

9. reticent — uncommunicative

The corpse remained reticent about the nature of his death, only rambling about inconsequential matters such as the weather, a girl he had gone out with at fourteen years of age, and his latest novel, dealing with the oppression of the lower-class midgets of left Australia.

 

10. succinct — terse

Let me be succinct.

1. stramineous — straw-like

It is hardly worth responding to the stramineous arguments of my opponents, who apparently have never read the story of the the Three Little Pigs.

 

2. maudlin — foolishly tearful or sentimental

Among the travellers of the Mormon Trail were several women poets, who composed fierce though maudlin elegies to the children who died upon the journey.

 

3. chaffinch — common finch

The poor little chaffinch is harried from the fruit tree by the malevolent crows.

 

4. nefarious — extremely wicked

Cicero would rail against Catiline’s nefarious plot to the end of his days, knowing as do all good politicians just how to drum up votes and support.

 

5. agon — a conflict, especially between a protagonist and an antagonist in a work of literature

Small comfort for the slacker prince that he maintained his independence during his agon with capitalist society, stuck as he was in his job at the used record store.

 

6. cantrip — magic spell, trick of a witch

Deceived by the saleswoman’s cantrips and enchanted by her beautiful smile, Leon finally signed the contract, little realizing how quickly his life would change.

 

7. refulgent — brightly shining

Her metallic silver high-top sneakers were refulgent beneath the stage lights.

 

8. tropology — the use of tropes or figures of speech

The film Team America is a devastating critique of the tropology of current “blockbuster” movies.

 

9. forte — a specialty or exceptional ability of a person

His forte is stopping conversation dead with his inappropriate jokes.

 

10. purport — to claim or profess

Advertising purports to inform us of new products which may be of interest, but of course is driven by pecuiary interests of the manufacturers.

1. nascent — beginning to exist or develop

Though some pundits have pointed to a nascent sense of interdependence among the world’s people, more likely we’ll just see more of the same.

 

2. nescience — the state of not knowing

Conspiracy theories may derive as well from a human tendency to insist upon “yes/no” answers; we feel great discontent in a perpetual state of nescience.

 

3. epigenesis — the process by which genetic information, as modified by environment, is transformed into an organism’s substance and behaviors

Perhaps many mental illnesses have their epigenesis in the family life which surrounds the sufferers, to at least the same extent these selfsame sufferers are ‘hard-wired’ for psychological problems.

 

4. inbred — resulting from inbreeding

An inbred predisposition to hemophilia was the heritage of the crowned heads of Europe, with dire effects for the Romanovs.

 

5. patent — obvious

The patent traits of character war sometimes with the latent aspects.

 

6. penetrance — the frequency with which a given gene produces its effect

Mendel discovered genetic effects because of the striking penetrance of changes in the plants he studied.

 

7. innate — part of the essential character of something, rather than learned

The extent to which violence, and especially the urge to war, is innate in human nature has been debated since the dawn of anthropology.

 

8. inveterate — firmly entrenched through habit or long practice

He is known as an inveterate liar.

 

9. ingrained — deep-rooted

She had an ingrained aversion to speaking the truth; unfortunately, she had no such compunction against speaking her mind.

 

10. extrinsic — foreign; external

Advertising impinges upon most of its viewers, thus its effect may be seen as extrinsic, though prolonged exposure obviously produces internal effects on mind, and perhaps body.

1. myrmidon — blindly loyal follower and carryer-out of a leader’s orders

If Hunstman refuses to sign the No Tax Increase pledge, the Tea Party myrmidons may exact their revenge by ensuring that he cannot gain the Republican nomination.

 

2. metempsychosis — transmigration of the soul

The disavowal of spirit or soul (call it what you will) in modern thought seems to look less and less like metempsychosis and more and more like plain psychosis.

 

3. acidulous — slightly sour

Attacking the worst excesses of celebrity distracts from real issues of health and life and love, and even the most scathing diatribe warrants an acidulous tone at best.

 

4. limpid — clear

The hawk circling high overhead was a stark speck in the otherwise limpid desert sky.

 

5. dyspareunia — pain during intercourse

Barbaric neanderthals might mistakenly believe that dyspareunia is expected by women, but in fact it may be an early sign of ovarian cancer.

 

6. vermiculate — having wormlike, wavy lines

Every pain, every failed promise could be read in the vermiculate coffer that still held the ring he had never had the courage to proffer to Emily.

 

7. crepuscular — like twilight; dim

In the crepuscular light of the attic, he could not discern the mounted deer antlers which gashed his forehead, narrowly missing his eye socket.

 

8. obiter dictum — judicial opinion incidental to a given case, and thus not legally binding

Strangely enough, the entire principle by which the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution has been held to give corporations all the rights of “persons” can be traced to an obiter dictum made in 1886 by a Supreme Court Justice before oral arguments began in the case before the Court.

 

9. refract — to change by transmission or viewing through a medium

Though each age believes that it and it alone sees clearly what its predecessors only dimly viewed, it is obvious that every age — including our own — refracts the truth through its cultural lens.

 

10. anon — soon

I will provide you with more vocabulary words anon.