#rare words
A tough outer protective layer, especially that of an animal or plant.
A sudden blast of wind descending from a mountainous coast to the sea.
The fuzz that pterosaurs had.
Volvation, is a defensive behavior in certain animals, in which the animal rolls its own body into a ball, presenting only the hardest parts of its integument, or its spines to predators (such as hedgehogs, armadillos, and pill bugs).
A stem of a plant, especially a grass, bearing flower stalks at short intervals.
A writer or collector of myths.
Resembling a feather, especially in having similar parts arranged on opposite sides of an axis like the barbs on the rachis of a feather.
Snoutfair: A person with a handsome countenance
Pussyvan: A flurry, temper
Wonder-wench: A sweetheart
Lunting: Walking while smoking a pipe
California widow: A married woman whose husband is away from her for any extended period
Groak: To silently watch someone while they are eating, hoping to be invited to join them
Jirble: To pour out (a liquid) with an unsteady hand: as, he jirbles out a dram
Curglaff: The shock felt in bathing when one first plunges into the cold water
Spermologer: A picker-up of trivia, of current news, a gossip monger, what we would today call a columnist
Tyromancy: Divining by the coagulation of cheese
Beef-witted: Having an inactive brain, thought to be from eating too much beef.
Queerplungers: Cheats who throw themselves into the water in order that they may be taken up by their accomplices, who carry them to one of the houses appointed by the Humane Society for the recovery of drowned persons, where they are rewarded by the society with a guinea each, and the supposed drowned person, pretending he was driven to that extremity by great necessity, is also frequently sent away with a contribution in his pocket.
Englishable: That which may be rendered into English
Resistentialism: The seemingly spiteful behavior shown by inanimate objects
Bookwright: A writer of books; an author; a term of slight contempt
Soda-squirt: One who works at a soda fountain in New Mexico
With squirrel: Pregnant
Zafty: A person very easily imposed upon
etterath
n. the feeling of emptiness after a long and arduous pro- cess is finally complete—having finished school, recovered from surgery, or gone home at the end of your wedding— which leaves you relieved that it’s over but missing the stress that organized your life into a mission.
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Fear of freedom.
Troglomorphism is the morphological adaptation of an animal to living in the constant darkness of caves, characterised by features such as loss of pigment, reduced eyesight or blindness, and frequently with attenuated bodies and/or appendages. Stygobitic, stygofauna, troglofauna, and hypogean or hypogeic, are often used for cave-dwelling organisms.
A traitor who serves as the puppet of the enemy occupying his or her country.
Also photochromic, of or relating to a substance or object whose color changes on exposure to light.
Of or relating to rising wind currents.
Of or relating to the downward flow of cold dense air.
In the study of mythology, the essential kernel of a myth, an irreducible, unchanging element, similar to a cultural meme, one that is always found shared with other, related mythemes and reassembled in various ways.
To suffocate or smother.
A horse that does not win, place, or show in a race.
A loser in a competition, as in an election.
One that has little talent or success.
Or katabasis a descent of some type, such as moving downhill, the sinking of the winds or sun, a military retreat, a trip to the underworld, or a trip from the interior of a country down to the coast.
