Week 16: vocabulary (children literature)

1.      tutelary: guardian; protecting.

The archetypal demon of Japanese folklore had always had two faces, being not only a destructive presence but also a potentially protective and tutelary being.

-- John W. Dower, War Without Mercy

2.      arcane: understood or known by only a few.

Practitioners of this arcane art combine highly abstract mathematical deduction with some of the basic behavioral assumptions of micro-economics to produce theories of the behavior of voters, of representative assemblies, of bureaucracies, and even of courts.

-- Jerry L. Mashaw, Greed, Chaos, and Governance

3.      rusticate: to go or send to the country.

Ezra holds out in London, and refuses to rusticate.

-- T. S. Eliot to Conrad Aiken, "21 August 1916", The Letters of T. S. Eliot: Volume I, 1898-1922 edited by Valerie Eliot

4.      fractious: tending to cause trouble; also, irritable.

Marcus frequently took a rod to Ambrose's back--with the predictable result of making the boy even more fractious and slow to obey.

-- Roy Morris Jr., Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company

5.      stanch: to stop the flowing of; to check.

Otherwise Stalin might have feared that President Harry Truman would stanch any North Korean invasion by threatening to use atomic weapons.

-- John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America

6.      furtive: obtained or characterized by stealth; sly; secret; stealthy.

He had always been more than willing to show me parts of [his notebook], whenever I asked him to; and naturally I had taken many furtive looks at its innermost pages when he wasn't around.

-- Michael Chabon, Werewolves in Their Youth

7.      Elysium: paradise.

Elysium can be found somewhere on the southern Pacific coast of Oaxaca, about as far from the United States as you can get and still be in Mexico.

-- Keith Kachtick, "Donde Esta Paradise?", Esquire, January 1, 1999

8.      otiose: ineffective; also, being at leisure; also, of no use.

Mr. Federspiel's surreal flourishes and commentaries straddle the line between interesting and otiose. Most of the surrealism is pretty but pointless.

-- D. F. Wallace, "The Million-Dollar Tattoo", New York Times, May 5, 1991

9.      plangent: beating with a loud or deep sound; also, expressing sadness.

She moans along with the woman who is singing -- wailing, really -- her hands gripping the steering wheel to the plangent cries of the singer and the sobbing of violins.

-- Alice Walker, By the Light of My Father's Smile

10.  malcontent: one who is discontented or dissatisfied.

Her antagonism inspired him, pushed him into ever more extreme positions, and by the time he was ready to leave the house, and go off to college, he had indelibly cast himself in his chosen role: as malcontent, as rebel, as outlaw poet prowling the gutters of a ruined world.

-- Paul Auster, Timbuktu

11.  gallimaufry: a hodgepodge; jumble; confused medley.

We have the same eyes dark and chestnut hair. But I am a lame gallimaufry and she remains perfect.

-- Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

12.  meretricious: tawdry.

Let us be thought over-much plain and simple, even bare, rather than gaudy, flashy, cheap and meretricious.

-- Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City

13.  solace: comfort in grief.

Surrounded by unhappiness at home, John Sr. early on found solace and certainty in the realm of science and technology.

-- Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind

14.  admonition: gentle or friendly reproof; friendly warning.

After debating whether Keayne should be excommunicated, the congregation concluded that an admonition would suffice.

-- Patricia O'Toole, Money & Morals in America

15.  interregnum: the interval between two reigns; also, any breach of continuity in an order.

They were at the moment enjoying a sort of interregnum from Roman authority.

-- Frederic William Farrar, Life of St. Paul

16.  velleity: volition in its weakest form.

My guess is that instead of being men of decision we are in reality men of velleity.

-- Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

17.  derogate: to deviate from expectation; also, to detract; also, to disparage.

If someone wants to derogate from that and make a choice, then they are free to do it.

-- Ciaran Fitzgerald, "Food champion'srecipe for success", Irish Times, November 13, 1998

18.  mazy: resembling a maze; intricate or confusing.

By now some 20 characters are caught in the turns and baffles of Mr. Dunne's mazy plot.

-- George Stade, "A Fisherman of Guilt", New York Times, March 28, 1982

19.  pablum: something (as writing or speech) that is trite, insipid, or simplistic.

I imagined his thoughts had been solely of me, that the letter would be filled with love sonnets, that it would gush with the same romantic pablum I devoured from those movie star magazines.

-- Kate Walbert, The Gardens of Kyoto

20.  wag: a humorous person; a wit.

The master of ceremonies was one Boston, a noted wag, and the occasion seemed to promise the greatest facetiousness.

-- Francis Bret Harte, The Luck of Roaring Camp

21.  eremite: a hermit.

He is in the private cave of his freedom, an eremite, a solitary; he orders his mind as he pleases.

-- Cynthia Ozick, "Writers Domestic and Demonic", New York Times, March 25, 1984

22.  pertinacious: holding obstinately to a belief, purpose or design; also, stubbornly persistent.

We were presently attacked by tens of thousands of the most bloodthirsty, pertinacious, and huge mosquitoes that I ever saw or read of.

-- H. Rider Haggard, She

23.  Hobson's choice: a choice without an alternative.

They're faced with a Hobson's choice: Make the plunge . . . or face a terrifying alternative -- gradual extinction.

-- Heather Green, "The Great Yuletide Shakeout", Business Week, November 1, 1999

24.  luminary: any body that gives light; also, a person of eminence or brilliant achievement.

. . .such jazz luminaries as Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford, Louis Armstrong, and Earl Hines.

-- Daniel Mark Epstein, Nat King Cole

25.  benefaction: the act of conferring a benefit; also, a benefit conferred.

It may be, as some social psychologists argue, that the competitive urge to gain more is in time replaced by an equally competitive urge to win fame and favor through public benefactions.

-- Robin W. Winks, Laurance S. Rockefeller: Catalyst for Conservation