{"id":4409,"date":"2023-11-24T01:08:23","date_gmt":"2023-11-24T09:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educatedguesswork.com\/?p=4409"},"modified":"2023-11-24T01:08:23","modified_gmt":"2023-11-24T09:08:23","slug":"friday-vocabulary-277","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educatedguesswork.com\/?p=4409","title":{"rendered":"Friday Vocabulary"},"content":{"rendered":"

1. doryphore<\/strong> \u2014 persistent pest, obstinately pedantic critic<\/p>\n

And of course Reinhard, the office <\/em>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.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2. aoudad<\/strong> \u2014 Barbary sheep <\/p>\n

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 <\/em>aoudads which visitors may see as they ascend to the immense home.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

3. slut’s wool<\/strong> \u2014 [idiom<\/em>] dust and debris that gathers beneath furniture (in supposed reference to slatternly housekeeping habits)<\/p>\n

Looking for the missing contact lens with my flashlight at ground level among the <\/em>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.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

4. pisstake<\/strong> \u2014 [UK or Australian slang<\/em>] parody, pastiche<\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

5. burrnesha<\/strong> \u2014 [Albanian<\/em>] Balkan sworn virgins, women in parts of western Balkan regions who take an oath of celibacy and gain privileges otherwise available only to men<\/p>\n

There never were very many <\/em>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.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

6. roman-fleuve<\/strong> \u2014 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<\/p>\n

And if this biography or memoir or whatever it pretends to be is actually the masterful <\/em>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.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

7. Transoxania<\/strong> \u2014 region beyond the Oxus River, northeast of the historical Persian province of Khorasan<\/p>\n

His commitment to the arts was well known, and the distinctive style of Timurid miniature painting is still one of the glories of <\/em>Transoxania.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

8. ecru<\/strong> \u2014 very light beige, color of unbleached linen; dark greyish yellow<\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

9. holus bolus<\/strong> \u2014 all together, all at once, entirely<\/p>\n

The urchin tried to eat all the food on his plate <\/em>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.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

10. dramaturge<\/strong> \u2014 adviser to theater company about repertoire and public relations<\/p>\n

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 <\/em>dramaturge, who dared to speak the unspeakable directly to her face.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bonus Vocabulary<\/h4>\n

(UK informal)<\/p>\n

bog standard<\/strong> \u2014 just ordinary (with derogatory connotation)<\/p>\n

He showed up in that <\/em>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?<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1. doryphore \u2014 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 \u2014 Barbary sheep The hills around Hearst Castle … <\/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-4409","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\/4409","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=4409"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/educatedguesswork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4412,"href":"https:\/\/educatedguesswork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4409\/revisions\/4412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatedguesswork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatedguesswork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatedguesswork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}