{"id":4439,"date":"2024-02-02T10:52:47","date_gmt":"2024-02-02T18:52:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educatedguesswork.com\/?p=4439"},"modified":"2024-02-02T10:52:47","modified_gmt":"2024-02-02T18:52:47","slug":"friday-vocabulary-284","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educatedguesswork.com\/?p=4439","title":{"rendered":"Friday Vocabulary"},"content":{"rendered":"

1. toerag<\/strong> (also toe-rag<\/strong>) \u2014 [British colloquial<\/em>] worthless or despicable person; vagrant<\/p>\n

But I’m not about to be made to feel guilty by some <\/em>toerag whose problems are all his own.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2. noddle<\/strong> \u2014 [British<\/em>] the head<\/p>\n

This job’s not a very good use of your fine old <\/em>noddle, now is it?<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

3. reredorter<\/strong> \u2014 privy in medieval monastery<\/p>\n

I made my way through the steady rain to the <\/em>reredorter, where it seemed all of the brethren had gathered, perhaps upset in the same way I had been by the cook’s daunting stew.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

4. pomo<\/strong> \u2014 [slang<\/em>] postmodern<\/p>\n

And then Fincham-Smythe came out with some <\/em>pomo Marxist twaddle that I thought we’d all said good riddance to when the new millennium arrived.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

5. sucket fork<\/strong> \u2014 eating utensil with spoon bowl on one end of the stem and two- or three-tined fork on the other, used for eating sweetmeats<\/p>\n

It seems strange that the fork was the last of our three primary pieces of silverware to come into common use, with only specialized versions before our modern era\u2014such as the <\/em>sucket fork beloved by the Tudors\u2014but earlier eaters were quite content to use their fingers for most of the purposes we put our forks to.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

6. malapert<\/strong> \u2014 impudent, overly saucy<\/p>\n

I’ll take no such words from a <\/em>malapert serving wench who no better knows her place than to take such umbrage at the master’s will.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

7. sobriquet<\/strong> \u2014 nickname<\/p>\n

His <\/em>sobriquet, “the Petty”, derived from the possibly apocryphal account of the would-be king’s dunning of his tax collectors with questions about every divergence from projected revenues, to the point where his finance minister, the Bishop Polpr\u00eatre, resigned (or rather, attempted to resign) in pretended disgust.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

8. criminator<\/strong> \u2014 [archaic<\/em>] accuser, calumniator<\/p>\n

Thus did my own feelings become <\/em>criminators against my own spouse, so troubled had I been by the knowing looks and diffident words of my fellows.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

9. veronica<\/strong> \u2014 bullfighting pass in which matador swings his muleta before the bull while keeping his legs perfectly still<\/p>\n

With a passable <\/em>veronica I grabbed the boy off his bike just as it passed in its pell-mell descent and held him safely as his vehicle flew into and over the railing just on the other side of the roadway, to fall in an agony of metal and rubber onto the rocks below.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

10. groat<\/strong> \u2014 very old English coin of silver, worth four pennies<\/p>\n

Though the <\/em>groat was taken from circulation in the 17th Century, it is still minted as one of the Maundy coins.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bonus Vocabulary<\/h4>\n

(derogatory military slang)<\/p>\n

Rupert<\/strong> \u2014 junior officer<\/p>\n

He had the serene self-confidence and total lack of situational awareness that epitomized most of the Sandhurst <\/em>Ruperts I had contact with during that sweltering summer campaign.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

1. toerag (also toe-rag) \u2014 [British colloquial] worthless or despicable person; vagrant But I’m not about to be made to feel guilty by some toerag whose problems are all his own.   2. noddle \u2014 [British] the head This job’s not a very good use of your fine old noddle, now is it?   3. … <\/p>\n

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