Prorogue

Last night I was read­ing The Glo­ri­ous Cause: The Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion, 1763 – 1789 when I came across this word, in a sen­tence refer­ring to the pro­rogue of…

Formicicide

I start­ed won­der­ing if this word exist­ed as I was using my vac­u­um clean­er as a means of dis­pens­ing with a pro­ces­sion of the six-legged…

Epiphyte

Found in Riv­er of Doubt, a book about Theodore Roo­sevelt’s explo­ration of the South Amer­i­can riv­er which today bears his name, six years after leaving…

Clout

Anoth­er word that I under­stood only from con­tex­tu­al clues. «His word car­ries a lot of clout» implies import and respect. This is how the word…

Apricate

This was a job for the OED. Nei­ther the Oxford Amer­i­can (includ­ed in the Dic­tio­nary dash­board wid­get on my Mack­er­tosh) nor the Mer­ri­am-Web­ster Web­ster’s Third…

Ostler

This was part of a col­lec­tion prints from the 1880s depict­ing let­ters of the alpha­bet, with a pro­fes­sion start­ing with said let­ter. A was for…

Scourge

Once again, I would have told you that I knew what scourge means. And I would have been gen­er­al­ly sort of right. I would have used it in cer­tain con­texts as a syn­onym for threat or to mean a dam­ag­ing influence.

But when I came across the sec­ond Por­cian law, which accord­ing to wikipedia, «pro­hibits scourg­ing of cit­i­zens with­out appeal», it became painful­ly clear that I had no idea of its spe­cif­ic meaning.

Porcian and Sempronian Law

The most sacred rights of free­dom, con­firmed by the Por­cian and Sem­pron­ian laws, were sus­pend­ed by the mil­i­tary engage­ment.  —Edward Gib­bon, The Decline and Fall…

Deliquescence

Accord­ing to Slate, ear­ly twen­ti­eth-cen­­tu­ry fash­ion design­er Paul Poiret wrote, «The taste for the refine­ments of the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry had led all women into a…