Chapter 1 – Cruel to be Kind

Word Definition
Mingy: Mean and stingy; small in quantity (informal)
Nepenthe: A drug or something else that helps someone forget sorrow or pain
Nostrum: A medicine, made up of secret ingredients, whose efficacy is in question, and is usually prepared by the person selling it; a panacea
Schadenfreude: Guilty pleasure one feels when others are suffering
Rapprochement: An establishment or reestablishment of good relations or harmony
Handsel: A gift given to wish good luck for a new year or a new enterprise; the first money received by a business or enterprise usually signifying good luck
Exculpate: To free from blame, to prove to be guiltless
Trade-Last: A compliment that one had overheard and is willing to trade to a person if that person will repeat a favorable remark made about oneself (informal)
Minatory: Menacing or threatening
Screed: A long and monotonous tirade or a long letter
Excoriate: To abrade, to wear the skin off; to denounce scathingly
Niggardly: Stingy; meanly small adv. In a stingy manner
Stygian: Related to the river Styx; gloomy, dark; hellish; unbreakable (oath)
Onus: Burden, something that takes considerable effort to accomplish; blame
Panacea: A remedy for all diseases or ills; cure-all
Gemütlich: Agreeable

Chapter 2 – Country Mouse and City Mouse

Word Definition
Benighted: Inexperienced, naïve
Fusty: Musty, mildew; old fashioned, antiquated
Déclassé: Having reduced social status, of inferior status; one with reduced social status
Jejune: Dull; lacking in nutrition; childish
Tatterdemalion: One wearing rags or tattered clothes adj. ragged
Eruct: To belch
Bombilation: Buzzing, humming sound
Troglodyte: A member of any ancient or mythological race that dwelt in caves; a recluse, a brutish person, a hermit
Mordant: Bitingly sarcastic; incisive; sharply painful
Elan: Enthusiasm or vigor; distinctive style
Bedizen: To dress in a gaudy fashion
Sashay: To walk, to glide in an easy or casual manner; to strut; to do a certain dance move in which one foot slides sideways and is then followed by the other
Fop: A dandy, coxcomb, a man overly concerned with (and usually vain about) his manners and clothes
Cognoscenti: A connoisseur; one with refined taste, esp. in the fine arts; one “in the know”
Panache: Verve; style; originally meant a plume of feathers, esp. on a helmet
Conurbation: A metropolitan area; a region that is predominately urban

Chapter 3 – For Better or for Worse

Word Definition
Termagant: A quarrelsome woman, a shrew, a nag
Poltroon: Craven, a coward; a worthless person
Cuckold: A derisive word for a man whose wife is unfaithful; v. to make a cuckold
Succubus: A female demon who was supposed to have sexual intercourse with sleeping men; a demon or fiend; a prostitute
Solipsism : A theory in philosophy that only the self can be known to exist; extreme focus on the self as opposed to relationships with others
Hirsute: Covered with hair
Virago: A shrew; a manly woman, a warrior
Pertinacious: That which holds stubbornly and tenaciously to a course of action, perversely persistent
Sine Qua Non: Something that is an essential condition or element
Uxorious: Excessively submissive or fond of one’s wife
Zaftig: Full-figured; plump (also zoftig)
Dowager: A widow with a title or property inherited from her husband; an older woman of high social standing
Agnate: From the father’s side of a family n. an actual relative from the father’s side
Nacre: Mother-of-pearl adj. iridescent, like mother-of-pearl
Consanguinity: Related by blood; a close affinity
Doyenne: The senior female member of a group; the senior male member of a group is called a doyen

Chapter 4 – War and Peace

Word Definition
Truculent: Ready to fight, pugnacious; fierce, cruel, deadly; scathing
Fusillade: A rapid or simultaneous discharge of many firearms or a firing squad; by extension, a rapid outburst in quick succession
Mettle: Courage; quality of temperament, character
Martinet: An officer who is a strict military disciplinarian; one who is a stickler for rigid adherence to rules
Sangfroid: Extraordinary composure even when in danger
Donnybrook: A tempestuous brawl
Obstreperous: Stubbornly and loudly defiant; clamorous; unmanageable
Ethnocentric: Belief in the supremacy of one’s race or ethnic group
Pyrrhic: Relating to Pyrrhus, king of Epirus. A Pyrrhic victory is one that is too costly
Comity: Courtesy, civility
Weal: Prosperity, well-being, the general good
Equipoise: Equal in weight or relationship, equilibrium; a counterbalance
Pollyanna: One who is unduly optimistic
Encomium: Eulogy or formal expression of praise; a panegyric; warm praise
Meliorism: A theory that holds the world can be improved with well-directed human action
Gemeinschaft: A group with similar tastes or a strong sense of identity

Chapter 5 – From Mountains to Mole Hills

Word Definition
Weltanschauung: A complete philosophy of the universe, world view
Tumescence: A swelling; swelling fullness
Ecumenical: Universal, of worldwide scope; related to the worldwide Catholic church
Googol: Ten to the 100th power
Gestalt: A group or configuration whose individual parts cannot stand alone, nor can they be understood as simply the summation of the elements
Rubric: A class, concept or category; a decorative title or first letter or a book printed or underlined in red
Turgid: Grandiloquent, excessively complicated style in language, bombastic; swollen
Oeuvre: The entire body of work of an artist; a work of art
Niggle: To be obsessed with trivialities; to quibble, to constantly find fault with
Homunculus: A dwarf, a small human; a tiny human believed by early biologists to live in a sperm cell
Exiguous: Scanty, meager
Soupçon: A tiny bit, a trace, a hint, a suspicion
Nugatory: Of little importance, ineffective, null
Scintilla: An iota, a small amount; a spark
Modicum: A small amount (usually followed by “of”)
Trice: An instant, a short period of time (always preceded by “in a”)

Chapter 6 – Rogers and Heart (music and musicality)

Word Definition
Hootenanny: A “thingamajig;” an informal jam session of singers with participation from the audience
Ululate: To wail or howl loudly
Paean: An intensely joyous hymn, a jubilant outburst
Beguine: A kind of popular dance, associated with Martinique
Threnody: A poem or song of mourning, a dirge
Dulcet: Melodious, having a nice agreeable sound; soothing
Tintinnabulation: The sound made when bells ring
Leitmotif: (music) a repeating theme associated with a particular character (in Wagnerian opera); a dominant and recurring theme
Palindrome: A word whose letters spell the same thing forward and backwards
Serif: Those little lines that are used in printing on the end of broad strokes used to form the lines of a letter
Metonymy: A figure of speech in which a word is substituted for a related word with which it is associated
Synecdoche: (sih NEK doh kee) A rhetorical device in which a part is used to represent the whole; a figure of speech in which the more comprehensive is used to represent the less comprehensive
Sesquipedalian: A long word, or one with many syllables adj. given to using long words
Codicil: An appendix, esp. to a will
Epistolary: Relating to letters; contained in letters; written in the form of a series of letters
Codex: A volume in manuscript, esp. an ancient one

Chapter 7 – Earth and Sky

Word Definition
Nadir: (astronomy) the point diametrically opposed to the zenith, directly below the observer, the lowest point
Ensconce: To settle oneself snugly; to hide or place in a secure place
Vernal: Occurring in spring; spring like; fresh, youthful
Dingle: A small wooded valley
Tectonic: Having to do with structural changes in the earth’s crust; architectural, related to construction
Spelunker: One whose hobby is to explore caves
Mudsill: A sill of a structure that is so low as to be in the mud; members of the lowest stratum of society
Sylvan: Like the woods; inhabiting a forest; wooded, with many trees (also silvan)
Zephyr: A gentle breeze
Penumbra: A partially shaded area in an eclipse (usually) between full sun and full shade; an area where something exists in an uncertain degree, fringe
Ziggurat: A pyramid constructed by the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians
Nimbus: A luminous cloud surrounding an ancient god while on earth; an atmosphere that surrounds a person or thing; a brilliant light that surrounds a holy person, god, or emperor that is used in artistic representation to denote holiness; a rain cloud
Fulgent: Dazzlingly bright, radiant
Apogee: The point of a moon or an artificial satellite when it is as far away as possible from the center of its orbit, the apex or high point
Dirigible: Able to be directed; n. a flying ship (such as a blimp)
Supernal: From above; from heaven

Chapter 8 – Womb to Tomb

Word Definition
Nascent: Emerging into existence, being born
Ontogeny: The development of an organism from conception to adult
Immure: To enclose as if within a wall; to entomb
Inchoate: In an early stage; imperfectly formed
Tyro: A beginner, one who understands the basics but lacks any experience
Eugenics: The study of ways in which to improve the human race through genetic breeding
Etiology: The study of causes or origins; assignment of a cause of a disease
Antediluvian: Extremely old (with negative connotation)
Fetid: Smelly
Callipygian: Having shapely buttocks
Crepuscular: Of or like twilight, dim; active during twilight
Etiolated: To whiten or become bleached
Ossify: To become bone; to become rigidly conventional, to mold into a conventional pattern
Igneous: Relating to fire; formed from a molten state; related to such rock
Atavism: The reappearance or return of previous trait after a period in which the trait had not appeared; an individual or a part that exhibits atavism
Incipient: Beginning to exist or appear; in an initial stage

Chapter 9 – Socrates and Plato

Word Definition
Docent: Serving to instruct; n. in some universities, a teacher who is not a member of the regular faculty; a tour guide in a museum or cathedral
Pedagogue: A schoolmaster, a teacher of children
Numismatics: The study of coins or currency; the collecting of coins or currency
Hermeneutics: The science of interpretation (esp. spiritual texts)
Cognitive: Of or related to conscious thought or intellectual activity
Exiguous: Scanty, meager
Emend: To correct, improve, esp. to correct a literary text
Disabuse: To correct someone; to free from misconception
Puerile: Juvenile; immature, puerilely
Iterant: Repeating
Mimetic: Imitative of the natural world in literature or art; imitative
Lassitude: A state of lethargy, weariness or listlessness
Ideate: To form an idea, to conceive
Hortative: Giving advice; encouraging, inciting
Pablum: That which nourishes or feeds; often used figuratively, i.e., food for the mind
Sisyphean: Requiring a continual and ineffective effort

Chapter 10 – Mutt and Jeff

Word Definition
Sui Generis: Unique, of its own kind
Eleemosynary: Charitable, or related to charity; given as an act of charity
Nonplus: To bewilder, to make incapable of speaking or doing n. state of confusion
Masticate: To chew, to grind with the teeth; to grind
Aphasia: An inability to understand or articulate spoken or written language caused by brain injury or disease
Manqué: One who has failed to meet his or her goal
Pusillanimous: Cowardly
Aegis: Protection; sponsorship
Trope: The use of a word in a figurative sense, a figure of speech
Dada: A literary and artistic movement (1916-1923) in Europe that thrived on absurdity, flouting conventional artistic values
Mollycoddle: To indulge, to pamper; a boy who is a mollycoddle n. a wimp or weakling
Tome: A book, esp. a large, heavy, scholarly book