1. flytime (also fly-time and fly time) — season when flies are prevalent and pestering During flytime, some ranchers even go so far as to put their cows out to pasture only after sunset, finding that cattle during the day merely tramp the grass and swat flies instead of feeding. 2. snook — protandric …
Tag Archives: bonus word
Friday Vocabulary
1. devilfish — octopus; piranha; devil ray; giant squid; other marine animals with (supposedly) malevolent mien And though that devilfish had his suckers wound around the old man’s arm, the aged diver did not panic, but calmly extracted the octopus from his hiding spot. 2. firedog — andiron Smoke continued to leak into the …
Friday Vocabulary
1. terret — ring on harness saddle through which the reins are passed When driving a unicorn team you need to ensure that the reins of the lead horse are fed loosely through the pair’s terrets, which usually requires an extra D-ring. 2. shebeen — [Ireland, Scotland, South Africa] unlicensed place where alcoholic drinks …
Friday Vocabulary
1. grom — [slang] young surfer; youth on a board of the various types (wake-, snow-, skate-; i.e., not corporate) That pesky grom really got worked when he took off on the wrong wave at the reef break. 2. reata — lariat, lasso Scotch Bill dallied the rawhide reata around his saddlehorn as he …
Friday Vocabulary
1. corm — [botany] swollen stem of plant serving as storage organ, bulbotuber Transforming your corm into a burgeoning banana plant is a labor of love and … well, labor, which is the reason for the much lower price. 2. graupel — mushy hail, granular snow To distinguish hail from graupel is most easily …
Friday Vocabulary
1. motorik — driving 4/4 beat—often with pop! on 3rd beat—typical of krautrock Though of course most are familiar with the motorik used in Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn”, aficionados still argue whether Jaki Liebezeit of Can or Klaus Dinger of Neu! deserves more credit for the spread of perhaps the most popular beat of the late 20th …
Friday Vocabulary
1. mews — alley where stables are found; street with houses built from former stables or built to look like stables No other passerby were on the streets at that hour, and as the tattered waif limped into the dark mews he looked about and behind in fear or resignation. 2. burr — to …
Friday Vocabulary
1. wally — [British slang] fool, doofus Brett always acted the wally but I suspected there was more going on behind those blue eyes than any of us ever knew. 2. chough — birds belonging to a genus within the crow family The choughs of Iona seemed to resent our presence, their dark forms …
Friday Vocabulary
1. cog — to load dice so as to cheat; to cheat; to plagiarize Someone had obviously cogged the dice—too obviously, for I couldn’t imagine anyone being gulled by dice that always threw sevens. 2. haggard — [Scots] enclosure on farm for storage of grain or hay We piled high the hay-bogy and Alf …
Friday Vocabulary
1. lithia water — mineral water containing lithium salts While it is true that 7-Up tried to capitalize on the craze for lithia water with its original name, the soft drink never contained any lithium, unlike the Coca-Cola product mentioned above. 2. kirmess (also kermesse or kermis) — street fair in Dutch or German …