{"id":3957,"date":"2022-10-28T11:29:43","date_gmt":"2022-10-28T18:29:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/educatedguesswork.com\/?p=3957"},"modified":"2022-10-28T11:29:43","modified_gmt":"2022-10-28T18:29:43","slug":"friday-vocabulary-230","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educatedguesswork.com\/?p=3957","title":{"rendered":"Friday Vocabulary"},"content":{"rendered":"

1. vicissitudes<\/strong> \u2014 ups and downs, recurring changes<\/p>\n

And as he stood there in the sunshine contemplating the various and impenetrable <\/em>vicissitudes of life, he was stung behind the ear by a gnat.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2. scabrous<\/strong> \u2014 having a rough surface, scaly; difficult, harsh; obscene, indecent<\/p>\n

He blamed his rubicund and <\/em>scabrous complexion upon the sulfides in the red wine he frequently drank.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

3. pinchbeck<\/strong> \u2014 alloy of copper and zinc supposed to resemble gold; counterfeit, spurious; tawdry<\/p>\n

They won’t bind him over, even though they caught him selling <\/em>pinchbeck watches to the swells, ’cause he’s too wise to claim it was anything like real gold.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

4. coprolite<\/strong> \u2014 petrified animal excrement<\/p>\n

Anti-evolutionists contemporary with Darwin preached that the <\/em>coprolite was actually a previously undiscovered animal, rather than fossilized dung.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

5. monkey nut<\/strong> \u2014 [British] peanut, ground-nut<\/p>\n

The floor was covered with <\/em>monkey nut shells but the bowls on the bar were empty.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

6. Gytrash<\/strong> (also Guytrash<\/strong>, Guytresh<\/strong>) \u2014 [Britsh<\/em>] legendary animal apparition of lonely country roads and paths, variously appearing as a large black dog or horse or even a cow<\/p>\n

I saw him, I tell you, the <\/em>Gytrash with huge coal-black eyes and flames beneath his cloven feet, right up on Snooks’ Hill as I came out of the coppice past the ruined mill.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

7. polemic<\/strong> \u2014 controversial, disputatious<\/p>\n

Though he reveled in <\/em>polemic discourse I always had the strange suspicion that at heart he held close some deeply held beliefs, fervent ideas that might have seemed quite conservative, even pedestrian were he to reveal them to the world at large.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

8. tumbrel<\/strong> \u2014 two-wheeled wooden cart, esp. that used to convey persons to the guillotine during the French Revolution<\/p>\n

And so once again the spectre of the guillotine and the <\/em>tumbrels is seen all across Europe, history once again repeating an old play for lack of better ideas.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

9. hellgrammite<\/strong> \u2014 neuropterous insect larva, used often as fishing bait<\/p>\n

Be careful with that can of <\/em>hellgrammites, as they’re likely to bite you when you grab them distracted by the beauty of the river.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

10. tent<\/strong> \u2014 [Scots<\/em>] heed, attention; to attend, to take heed<\/p>\n

Be sure to take <\/em>tent as you go through the cave’s entrance to stay far on the right side, as there’s a treacherous bit on the left where many a man’s been left with a bleeding head wound.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bonus Vocabulary<\/h4>\n

(idiom)<\/p>\n

nineteen to the dozen<\/strong> \u2014 going on rapidly without cease, usu. of speech<\/p>\n

Priscilla was rabbiting <\/em>nineteen to the dozen about the latest excesses of the revisions to last year’s trade agreements, so we knew she’d been possessed by some bureaucratic demon.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1. vicissitudes \u2014 ups and downs, recurring changes And as he stood there in the sunshine contemplating the various and impenetrable vicissitudes of life, he was stung behind the ear by a gnat.   2. scabrous \u2014 having a rough surface, scaly; difficult, harsh; obscene, indecent He blamed his rubicund and scabrous complexion upon the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Friday Vocabulary”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[112,69],"class_list":["post-3957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vocabulary","tag-bonus-word","tag-vocabulary","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatedguesswork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatedguesswork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatedguesswork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatedguesswork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatedguesswork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/educatedguesswork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3957\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatedguesswork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatedguesswork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatedguesswork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}