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.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. transpontine — of or related to (something on) the farther side of a bridge; of or related to the area south of the Thames river in London; of or related to sensational plays of the 19th Century presented in the area south of the River Thames

“I will not have your so-called ‘friends’ bringing their penchant for melodrama and their transpontine attitudes into my house,” said the stout publican and quondam theater critic.

 

2. cispontine — of or related to this side of a bridge

We could make out chevaux de frise and barbed wire before the barricades and guardhouse at the cispontine abutment, but the difficulties of the farther side were hidden by the impenetrable fog.

 

3. ratiocinate — to reason logically

Quimby seemed rather a dullard at most times, placid and affable and seemingly without a thought in his head, so when he was forced to ratiocinate upon any particularly challenging problem, sweat broke out upon his brow and one could almost imagine that the very veins at his temples began to throb with the effort to supply blood to the brain, that henceforth unused organ.

 

4. diehard — a person obstinately resistant to change; someone holding to a tenet with no single inclination to question that belief; person devoted entirely to a lost cause

There were, of course, a large number of diehards in favor of the Latin Mass, even after Vatican II.

 

5. vershok — old Russian unit of measurement equal to 1-3/4 inches, or 4.445 cm

He was very tall, even after he removed his papakha, standing at least 2 arshins and 11 vershoks high.

 

6. arshin — measurement of about 28 inches used in Imperial Russia and up to 1925

Arkady stood less than 2 arshins tall, and he had the pugnacious attitude of many very short men.

 

7. volute — having a spiral shape

The dog worried at the blanket and finally pulled it into the proper volute form upon which to rest her head.

 

8. demotic — of or related to common people; of or related to common language, vernacular; of or related to the simplified form of Egyptian cursive writing originating about the 7th Century BCE

But the wide spread of radio and finally television purged regional speech of its demotic vigor, replacing heretofore strong idioms with the pallid speech of news anchors and product demonstrators.

 

9. cleat — knob or device (often metal) used to secure lines on a nautical vessel; protrusion on shoes etc. to provide extra traction; strip secured across something to provide stability or strength

“Just cut the line! The cleat‘s about to go!”

 

10. constituent — part or piece of a whole; person represented by an elected official

Once we analyzed the stew we found one constituent entirely out of place: conium, or poison hemlock.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(old slang)

pi-jaw — sermonizing or patronizing talk, esp. of an adult to a child

Not since I was an undergrad have I had to sit still for such a load of pi-jaw as I was forced to suffer through that afternoon, as we all sat stupidly around the table and listened to J.B. rattle off his theories of what was wrong with the world and why.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. grutch — to complain

“If you must grutch and moan,” said the hospitaler, “have the sense to do it away from the sickroom windows.”

 

2. voile — diaphanous cotton fabric

If you decide to use voile for the side panels, be sure that the fabric is fully mercerized.

 

3. haylage — silage made from partly wet grass

We used the smaller opening for processing the haylage from Mr. Green’s silo, and that seemed to work fairly well.

 

4. oviduct — tube through which egg passes from ovary

Of course, most birds will have only an undeveloped oviduct and ovary on the right side.

 

5. philomath — scholar; astrologer

Whatever failings the noted philomath may have had, excessive humility was not among them.

 

6. wat — Buddhist temple (in parts of Southeast Asia)

In this village the wat was the social center, so we made our way thitherward to continue our inquiries.

 

7. Martinmas — November 11, St. Martin’s day

The weather at Martinmas was clear and cold, betokening a short and mild winter.

 

8. parfleche — rawhide with hair removed; item made from such hide

He accepted the gift parfleche gladly, doubtless planning to use it to resole his moccasins.

 

9. noma — gangrenous disease of the cheeks and mouth

Noma is only to be found in young children, and then only in those children already affected by other disease.

 

10. burgonet — light helmet for infantrymen with protective crest and cheek pieces

He thought himself well accoutered for war, though the veterans laughed to themselves at his fancy burgonet shaped like a lion’s head and chased with gold filigree.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(British idiom)

the Big Smoke — London; any big city

“Well, I was just thinking that it’s time maybe to be leaving the Big Smoke,” he said with a deceptive grin, “and you’ve just gone and made my decision for me.”

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. jingo — bellicose patriot

Appalled at Lord Muley’s quick insistence on massive reductions in the fleet, Sir Richard showed why he was considered the foremost jingo in the opposition with a long and loud speech of both hawkish and mawkish protest.

 

2. rondure — supple roundness; orb, sphere

As they swung through the canted bars of the nested Dymaxion domes, Harry found himself admiring Ellie’s splendid rondure perhaps more than was strictly necessary.

 

3. lemniscus — bundle of white nerve fibers in brainstem

Though Von Monakow’s explanation of the causative factors are not altogether satisfactory, his study of the consequences of lesions upon the lemniscus is nonetheless quite authoritative.

 

4. kleptocracy — rule by thieves

And thus was a once mighty republic torn asunder, turned into an insensate kleptocracy whose barbarous rulers were goverened only by their basest desires for gold and power and other, darker, lusts.

 

5. pibroch — funereal or martial bagpipe music

Long they heard the wailin’, the hesitating skirling, of Donny on the cliffs, trying over and over to master the pibroch his uncle had written for his pipes.

 

6. waffy — [British idiom] silly; faint; sickly, nauseating

But I come over all waffy and had to set down a spell, and have a bit of water.

 

7. zonulet — [archaic] little zone

I, too, was fascinated by that zonulet of love Herrick spoke of.

 

8. dioecious — [biology] having male and female sex organs in separate individuals (esp. of plants)

As even the most novice doper knows, marijuana plants are dioecious, and identification of the sexes is an important skill for a grower to have.

 

9. petrary — generic term for stone-heaving instruments of war

And now the order was given for all our petrary to be unleashed, and I loosed the mangonel with satisfaction, happy to see my small stones added to the huge boulders of the catapults and trebuchets.

 

10. farl — [Scots] flatbread or cake, typically cut in quadrants

He shared with me half a farl and I thanked him heartily, though the sodabread was hard chewing with no water or other drink.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(British idiom)

on one’s uppers — very poor, destitute [from idea of poverty so acute that one’s shoes have worn away all the leather, so that only the upper portion remains]

But mostly he was just lazy, only searching for work when he was really and truly on his uppers.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. trunnion — one of pair of pivots supporting something; cylindrical projection from cannon supporting same on its carriage

The bearings inside the telescope’s trunnions were manufactured to a previously unheard of precision, allowing the new astronomical wonder unparalleled accuracy in viewing the heavens.

 

2. okta — measurement of cloud cover equal to one eighth of the entire sky

At this time of year satellite imagery becomes quite difficult, as it is very rare that there are ever less than three oktas of clouds over the entire region.

 

3. bodkin — large thick needle for piercing leather or cloth; dagger

The craftsmanship is apparent in every seam of the wallet, the bodkin having been punched through the seams with only just enough force to make the fine overlapping stitches, unlike the gouged holes made by the machine process.

 

4. plash — to splash

The hem of his greatcoat was plashed by the puddle water with each step he made through the treacherous, muddy ground.

 

5. goaf — hayrick when in a barn; waste material of a mine

They hid the body among the goaf in that level, never expecting their crime to be discovered, nor the price to rise so high that it became profitable to work those diggings ever again.

 

6. accouter — to equip, to outfit

And so he set out into the cold desert night, accoutered only with a flashlight, a knife, and a single liter of water.

 

7. cat’s-paw (also cats paw or catspaw) — person used as a tool of another; [nautical] tiny breeze making ripples on a similarly small area of water; [nautical] hitch used to bind tackles to rope

He used Eddie as a cat’s-paw to once again get his nuts out of the fire.

 

8. apricity — [obsolete] light or heat of the sun

The housecat was stretched out upon the porch, endeavoring to absorb into his fur every bit of apricity from the pale winter sun.

 

9. catchment area — [British] area from which water drains into a particular lake or basin; area served by school or other institution

With pretensions of upward mobility, they decided to move across town to be in the best catchment area for their young daughters, though their wages had hardly been enough to pay the lower rent on their old place and besides the girls were only two years old at the time.

 

10. compunction — feeling of conscience

Perhaps the first time, so very many long years ago, he had felt a slight nagging compunction as he demanded the money from the single mother of three who had been his first assignment, but today he would punch a nun without a quiver of conscience, if she owed the boss a fiver.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(drug slang)

candy flip — to ingest LSD with MDMA

Some claim that candy flipping avoids all possibility of a bad trip, but even those proponents admit that there is an inevitable come-down the next day, perhaps not as severe as the hangover produced by alcohol, but somewhat severe nonetheless.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. doryphore — persistent pest, obstinately pedantic critic

And of course Reinhard, the office doryphore, noticed that we’d had to change the printer paper, and that the later pages of the report used 92 brightness paper instead of the 96 bright at the beginning.

 

2. aoudad — Barbary sheep

The hills around Hearst Castle still contain some of the animals the newspaper magnate once housed in his private zoo, including zebras amongst the cattle and the horned aoudads which visitors may see as they ascend to the immense home.

 

3. slut’s wool — [idiom] dust and debris that gathers beneath furniture (in supposed reference to slatternly housekeeping habits)

Looking for the missing contact lens with my flashlight at ground level among the slut’s wool beneath the old armchair in the corner, I realized that even if we found the dropped ophthalmic aid, Shelley would never want to stick it back in her eye, covered as it would be with detritus and dust from the previous millennium.

 

4. pisstake — [UK or Australian slang] parody, pastiche

It really weren’t much of a holiday special, more like a cobbled together pisstake of A Christmas Carol that gave pride of place to our primary sponsor that year, Bevin’s Buttered Hams.

 

5. burrnesha — [Albanian] Balkan sworn virgins, women in parts of western Balkan regions who take an oath of celibacy and gain privileges otherwise available only to men

There never were very many burrnesha in these mountains even at the time of the first reports of the practice, from 19th Century travelers, and today there may be only as few as a dozen ‘sworn virgins’ left living.

 

6. roman-fleuve — long involved novel about lives of intricately connected people; sequence of related novels detailing (for example) lives of a single family across generations; very lengthy and wordy text

And if this biography or memoir or whatever it pretends to be is actually the masterful roman-fleuve its proponents (among them Professor Halders) claim it to be, then this antepenultimate episode in this interminable work is its cloaca, the foul sewer into which this sluggish river of logorrhea finally descends.

 

7. Transoxania — region beyond the Oxus River, northeast of the historical Persian province of Khorasan

His commitment to the arts was well known, and the distinctive style of Timurid miniature painting is still one of the glories of Transoxania.

 

8. ecru — very light beige, color of unbleached linen; dark greyish yellow

On the train north to the summer retreat, Liesl was so proud of her ecru veil that she refused to remove it even when biscuits were bought from the treats cart.

 

9. holus bolus — all together, all at once, entirely

The urchin tried to eat all the food on his plate holus bolus and I had to gently remind him that he had loads of time to eat, and that all the food was his and his alone.

 

10. dramaturge — adviser to theater company about repertoire and public relations

Strangely enough, even though the director and the entire company knew that “Ms.” Patton was far too old to play Juliet, it was only Travers, our poor put-upon dramaturge, who dared to speak the unspeakable directly to her face.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(UK informal)

bog standard — just ordinary (with derogatory connotation)

He showed up in that bog standard Fiesta of his wearing the same clothes she’d seen him in earlier that day at work, and he’s wondering now why she doesn’t return his calls?

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. lithotomy — removal of stone by surgery from organ or vessel

The display of 19th-Century surgical implements, especially the lithotomy tools, frightened him viscerally, almost causing nausea and vertigo.

 

2. plus fours — baggy trousers gathered below the knee

Inspired by Gert Fröbe’s golf attire in Goldfinger, Jeremy started wearing plus fours everywhere, raving about how comfortable they were and declaring that they should be the male fashion trend to complement women’s ubiquitous yoga pants.

 

3. behoof — [archaic] benefit, advantage

“Using my lancers may be to Cedric’s behoof, but it certainly isn’t to mine!”

 

4. duplicity — deceitfulness; [archaic] state of being doubled

But even this was not the height—I should say rather the depth—of his duplicity, for he had also arranged for the two lovely women to meet at the lawyer’s office in the aftermath of his fictitious murder, only there discovering the bigamous nature of their marriage to (as they thought) the decedent.

 

5. balliwick — area of expertise; jurisdiction district for a bailiff

“Well, of course, it’s not really my balliwick, but I suppose I could try a runner, eh?”

 

6. mettlesome — possessing marked vigor and courage

You must remember that my troops at this point were mere lads, untrained farmboys most of them, not the mettlesome warriors that many of them were later to become.

 

7. accidence — [grammar] study of word inflections, the basics of grammar; rudiments of a subject

If you study the examples in any basic Latin accidence, you should have no problem with the entrance examination.

 

8. solideme — undivided unhyphenated compound word

And then there is an entire class of solidemes which have so lost their compound nature that we forget, for example, that once upon a time the word was written “to-day”.

 

9. sardonic — sneeringly cynical, bitterly derisive

I realized then that his mocking, sardonic manner concealed a vast reservoir of irresolution and doubt as to his own ability.

 

10. goozle — [slang] Adam’s apple, throat

I would have taken him out there and then, but he caught me a fist right in my goozle, and I fell wheezing and gasping to the floor.

 

10% (Ten Percent)

Anyone with a large library will frequently be asked the same tiresome question: “Have you read all of these books?” As if books were objects merely to be read, and not treasures to be savored, to be stored up against the (seemingly) inevitable collapse of all that is good and holy in this world. Now, Umberto Eco has written a great essay addressing this very question, and there’s no way I’m going to top—or even add a minuscule portion to—what that noted author said, so I will not try.

I do, however, have a very large library, of which I am too proud to be able to humblebrag about, and I have often, very often, been asked that apparently all-too-obvious question. (The writer Eco naturally surpasses me here as well, having been the owner of two libraries (one in his vacation home) of 30,000 and of 20,000 volumes.) To be sure, I am also asked which are my favorites, and how they are organized, and other queries of what I consider to be a more germane nature. But still, the most frequent question I am asked about my books is still: “Have you read all of these books?”

The answer, of course, is No. Not only have I not read all of these books, in fact many if not most of the books that I have read no longer reside in my library, as there are all sorts of reasons to get rid of a volume once you’ve read it, and only a few reasons to keep a book once read. (Though I have lots of those, too.) I have an unofficial notation in my database of books that I’ve read before I started explicitly tracking them in the db, but I don’t have a listing of all the tons and tons of science fiction I read as a teenager that I no longer own, nor of the many many books I’d borrow from the various used bookstores I worked at and read during my lunch breaks. And the list goes on. I have a flag for ‘Yes, I read this book’ in the database, as I say, but I try to be cautious of marking the various tomes, as I’m not always sure if I read this or that story, or if I read it in that particular edition with that particular introduction. And so on.

But, as my two readers of this blog know, I’ve been tracking my actual books read in that selfsame database since about June of 2015. And, since I now have each and every single book in my library catalogued (although I did find just last week a dozen books in my Werewolves & Vampires section that I’d somehow neglected to enter), I can announce with all sorts of flourishes and whatever else one does with sackbuts and other medieval stage instruments, that I can now state with absolute certainty* (* but see below) that I have read a significant portion of my library, viz., the titular Ten Percent (10%).

The actual calculation is as follows: As of today, I have 11,727 entries in my database for my own book collection—the last entry being the Montague Summers book The Werewolf. And, just this morning, while waiting for my chance to buy tickets for next years Comic-Con (which I did not succeed at doing, btw), I finished my Total Books Read #1173, the marvelous translation by Helen Waddell of some of the various lives and sayings of The Desert Fathers. Now I will point out that I usually put caveats around the books I say I’ve read, not counting comic books and graphic novels, but for this 10% figure I’m using the Total Books Read number, which includes comics, because I am looking at the library as a whole (that’s the 11,727 number). (For those of you really obsessed with stats and numbers, I can tell you that I have 11,186 books in my library excluding the comics, so I passed the 10% mark a while back, though I can’t just pluck out Total Books Read #1119 (Wittgenstein’s Poker), because I’ve acquired many books since reading that one back in July, never mind the fact that I just added those vampire and werewolf books recently that were sitting on the shelves for years now.) (And actually, horrifying thought, I just realized that three of my books read were not technically in my own library, but were books in my wife’s and my daughter’s own personal stock, the last being a James Bond book that my girl had but that I’d somehow never gotten around to grabbing before. So … aargh, maybe I haven’t read so many books as I thought and need another three books to get up to a full 10%, not including those books I’ve read twice since starting this tracking (another three books, so maybe it’s a wash), but now I’m so upset I can’t even remember how many parentheses I need to close now so I’ll just throw one out here.)

In any case (darn numbers and statistics and spreadsheets!), The Desert Fathers turned out to be a very delightful book, the stories being reminiscent of many of the Zen tales told of the early patriarchs of that weird little thing that might be a religion. Of course, Helen Waddell stacks the decks in favor of delight and humble wisdom, but that’s not really such a bad thing. One doesn’t always need to read the highlights of medieval hagiographic literature and find disgusting abasement and almost vicious self-mortification; though there’s a little bit of that here as well. But many, most, of the stories are uplifting and ennobling, and the beautiful (unconsciously so) story of St. Pelagia the Harlot is a triumphant fulfillment of this entire little volume. Check it out.