Segue, verb: to proceed without interruption.
Addie later recalled her host's charming segue to topics more pleasant.
-- Gary Kinder, Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea
2. Palimpsest, noun: an object or place whose older layers or aspects are apparent.
Each is a palimpsest, one improvisation partly burying another but leaving hints of it behind.
-- Robert Hughes, "Delight for Its Own Sake", Time, January 22, 1996
3. Bete noire, noun: something or someone particularly detested or avoided.
Even more regrettable, as far as Dame Edna is concerned, is the presence of her old bete noire, the extravagantly disgusting Sir Les Patterson.
-- "The Dame's New Man", Daily Telegraph, April 18, 1998
4. Farrago, noun: an assortment; a medley.
Roy Hattersley will upset much of Scotland by calling Walter Scott's lvanhoe "a farrago of historical nonsense combined with maudlin romance."
-- "Literary classics panned by critics", Independent, January 18, 1999
5. Expatiate, verb: to speak or write at length.
He had told her all he had been asked to tell--or all he meant to tell: at any rate he had been given abundant opportunity to expatiate upon a young man's darling subject--himself.
-- Henry Blake Fuller, Bertram Cope's Year
6. Nadir, noun: the lowest point.
Exploitation reached a nadir in the 1920s, when high government officials were implicated in a flourishing international slave trade and domestic forced labor.
-- Bill Berkeley, The Graves Are Not Yet Full
7. Protean, adjective: readily assuming different shapes or forms.
He was a protean character who constantly adapted to his environment.
-- David Maraniss, The Clinton Enigma
8. Fulsome, adjective: offensive from excess of praise.
Concealed disgust under the appearance of fulsome endearment.
-- Oliver Goldsmith, The Citizen of the World
9. Constitutional, noun: a walk taken for one's health.
Kerensky was, I imagine, on his usual early morning constitutional.
-- Richard Elman, Namedropping: Mostly Literary Memoirs
10. Quondam, adjective: former; sometime.
There was an exception to this in the form of Mrs Edna Parsons, a formidable Englishwoman who had once been the Prince's nanny and now served as proctor, supervising his behaviour. She was about fifty and true to her quondam profession, she could be quite strict.
-- David Freeman, One of Us
11. Sinecure, noun: an office or position that involves little work or responsibility.
I was fortunate to receive the...offer, which in practical terms was a sinecure.
-- David Freeman, One of Us
12. Vainglory, noun: excessive pride or vain display.
Spurred by the vainglory of being the first person in recent memory to catch a Solovki canal trout on a fly, I fished with newfound intensity.
-- Fen Montaigne, Reeling in Russia
13. Canard, noun: an unfounded or false report.
Whether this was true (which seems improbable) or was one of Lawrence's numerous canards (which seems very possible), it appears that Father did intend to strike camp at some time.
-- Douglas Botting, Gerald Durrell: The Authorized Biography
14. Gainsay, verb: to contradict; to deny.
In our present, imperfectly postmodern world, where most information still takes the potentially embarrassing form of printed matter lurking in archives, liars still must position themselves so that the historical record may not easily gainsay them.
-- Thomas M. Disch, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of
15. Portend, verb: to foreshadow; to bode.
Many signs portended a dark and stormy day.
-- Macaulay
16. Ratiocination, noun: the process of logical reasoning.
By a not uncommon process of ratiocination, Mrs. Fetherel's success had convinced her of her vocation.
-- Edith Wharton, "Expiation," Cosmopolitan, 1908
17. Equivocate, verb: to be deliberately ambiguous or unclear.
By equivocating, hesitating, and giving ambiguous answers, she effected her purpose.
-- Harriet Martineau, Letters from Ireland
18. Frisson, noun: a brief moment of intense excitement.
When we think a story hasn't been invented, there's an extra frisson in reading it.
-- "Too true", Independent, April 12, 1998
19. Tchotchke, noun: a trinket; a knickknack.
The rare tchotchke aside, our antiquing journeys mainly amounted to wishful foraging, in the spirit of a more roomy and prosperous someday we somehow never really articulated.
-- Jacquelyn Mitchard, The Most Wanted
20. Inveigh, verb: to rail (against some person or thing).
He saved it for his preaching, when he inveighed against sin and the devil.
-- Rubem Fonseca, Vast Emotions and Imperfect Thoughts (translated by Clifford E. Landers)
21. Propound, verb: to put forward for consideration.
Aristarchus not only challenged God, but he, and then Copernicus, propounded a theory that seemed so stupid on the face of it that even a fool would not believe it.
-- William E. Burrows, This New Ocean
22. Acrid, adjective: sharp and harsh; bitter.
He rips off another match, lights it, and uses it to light another cigarette. He shakes out the match, takes a puff, letting the acrid, unfiltered taste burn the back of his throat.
-- Kris Rusch, Hitler's Angel
23. Lachrymose, adjective: given to causing tears.
The game is perpetuated by the sons in a sometimes vicious sibling rivalry that inevitably subsides into lachrymose reconciliation.
-- Arthur Gelb and Barbara Gelb, O'Neill: Life With Monte Cristo
24. Fop, noun: a man who is vain about his dress and appearance.
He's swaddled in a heavy black wool overcoat and his shoes are silver-buckled with cap toes, the black leather well taken care of. He's a bit of a lounge lizard, a hip-hop fop.
-- Po Bronson, The Nudist on the Late Shift
25. Defenestrate, verb: to throw out of a window.
I defenestrated a clock to see if time flies!
-- Lane Smith, quoted in "Who's News", Time for Kids, September 25, 1998
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