bulbous

bulbous \BUHL-buhs\, adjective:

1. bulb-shaped; bulging.
2. having or growing from bulbs.

Your man comes nearer, and now some hint of a bulbous enlargement at one end, and perhaps of lateral appendages and a bifurcation, begins to show itself.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Over the Teacups, 1890

Good things have been said about it by blue-nosed, bulbous-shoed old benchers, in select port-wine committee after dinner in hall.
-- Chalres Dickens, Bleak House, 1852-1853

Bulbous comes from the Latin literally meaning "bulb" or "onion." It entered English in the late 16th century.

pittance

pittance \PIT-ns\, noun:

1. a small amount or share.
2. a small allowance or sum, as of money for living expenses.
3. a scanty income or remuneration.

He showed us a perfectly authentic mission-card which certified that his family had received a pittance from some charitable organisation situated in the Whitechapel neighbourhood, and that, moreover, they were in the habit of receiving this pittance; and that, finally, their claim to such pittance was amply justified by the poverty of their circumstances.
-- E. E. Cummings, The Enormous Room, 1922

Each daughter can claim an income of 250 pounds, in case of marriage. It is evident, therefore, that if both girls had married, this beauty would have had a mere pittance, while even one of them would cripple him to a very serious extent.
-- Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Adventure of the Speckled Band," The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1892

Pittance shares its root with the word pity. It entered English in the 13th century from the Latin pietatem meaning "piety," "loyalty" and "duty."

meander

meander \mee-AN-der\, verb:

1. to proceed by or take a winding or indirect course: The stream meandered through the valley.
2. to wander aimlessly; ramble: The talk meandered on.
3. Surveying. to define the margin of (a body of water) with a meander line.

noun:
1. Usually, meanders. turnings or windings; a winding path or course.
2. a circuitous movement or journey.
3. an intricate variety of fret or fretwork.

I had forgotten about muggers on our walk down the avenue, but as we meandered over toward Broadway the street got darker and I became acutely conscious of all we had read about them.
-- Larry McMurtry, Somebody's Darling, 1978

The rest of us climbed the cliffs and hills, looked at entrenched meanders, terminal moraines, glacial detritus, relief maps of the Delaware Water Gap, and outcroppings of the Wissahickon Mica Schist.
-- Renata Adler, Speedboat, 1976

The term meander comes from the Greek Maiandros which is the name of a winding river in Caria. The noun form entered English in the 1500s, and the verb form shortly followed.

troubadour

troubadour \TROO-buh-dawr, -dohr, -door\, noun:

1. one of a class of medieval lyric poets who flourished principally in southern France from the 11th to 13th centuries, and wrote songs and poems of a complex metrical form in langue d'oc, chiefly on themes of courtly love. Compare trouvère.
2. any wandering singer or minstrel.

One day a troubadour appeared at the castle and was invited to stay and sing for the nobleman's court. 
-- Thomas Sanchez, Day of the Bees, 2000

…whenever a troubadour lays down the guitar and takes up the sword trouble is sure to follow.
-- O. Henry, Sixes and Sevens, 1902

While the origin of troubadour is not entirely known, it is thought to have come from Old Provencal trobar meaning "to find," "invent a song" or compose in verse.

doggerel

doggerel \DAW-ger-uhl, DOG-er-\, adjective:

1. (of verse) a. comic or burlesque, and usually loose or irregular in measure. b. rude; crude; poor.

noun:
1. doggerel verse.

Whoever wrote that doggerel had picked up the Virginia gossip about Jefferson having a black "wife," but Callender assumed the dialect poet had only a suspicion. 
-- William Safire, Scandalmonger, 2000

I found myself in a house of kindly people, who had found me on the third day wandering, weeping, and raving through the streets of St. John's Wood. They have told me since that I was singing some insane doggerel about "The Last Man Left Alive! Hurrah! The Last Man Left Alive!"
-- H. G. Wells, War of the Worlds, 1898

Doggerel is likely a blend of dog and the pejorative suffix -rel. It came to English in the 1400s as a way to insult bad poetry by implying that it could have been created by dogs, or could have only been enjoyed by dogs.

bedraggle

bedraggle \bih-DRAG-uhl\, verb:

to make limp and soiled, as with rain or dirt.

The lane was long and soused and dark that led to the house I helped to fill and bedraggle.
-- Dylan Thomas, "The Crumbs of One Man's Year," The Collected Stories of Dylan Thomas, first published in 1946

Here in town, she probably preferred to tread the extent of the two drawing-rooms, and measure out the miles by spaces of forty feet, rather than bedraggle her skirts over the sloppy pavements.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance, 1852

Bedraggle comes from the word draggle, which is a diminutive form of drag. It entered English in the 1700s.

viceroy

viceroy \VAHYS-roi\, noun:

1. a person appointed to rule a country or province as the deputy of the sovereign: the viceroy of India.
2. a brightly marked American butterfly, Limenitis archippus, closely mimicking the monarch butterfly in coloration.

...the viceroy, Wavell, understood that he was finished, washed-up, or in our own expressive word, funtoosh.
-- Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children, 1980

No word had come from the Portuguese Viceroy about the Rahimi's capture, why it had been done, when the ship would be released, and what conditions had to be met before that happened.
-- Indu Sundaresan, The Feast of Roses, 2003

Viceroy comes from the Latin prefix vice meaning "in place of" and roi meaning "king." It's been used in English since the 16th century.

quincunx

quincunx \KWING-kuhngks, KWIN-\, noun:

1. an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.
2. Botany. an overlapping arrangement of five petals or leaves, in which two are interior, two are exterior, and one is partly interior and partly exterior.

It must have been done with extraordinary taste and care, for there is not a bit of it which is not rarely beautiful. Sir Thomas Browne himself, for all his Quincunx, would have been delighted with it, and have found material for another "Garden of Cyrus."
-- Bram Stoker, The Lady of the Shroud, 1909

Light bathed the other inner flank and spilled out onto the bridge and along the wall that carried the leftway up to the gatehouse. Its face was studded with the cypher of the five-spot quincunx.
-- Ricardo Pinto, The Chosen, 1999

Quincunx comes from the Latin meaning "five twelfths." It has been part of English since the 17th century.

gibbous

gibbous \GIB-uhs\, adjective:

1. Astronomy. (of a heavenly body) convex at both edges, as the moon when more than half full.
2. humpbacked

Saturday is full moon, so we will celebrate—if we are lucky with the weather—by the light of a waxing gibbous moon.
-- A. S. Byatt, The Children's Book, 2009

The stars and the gibbous moon demanded to be looked at, and when one meteorite had streaked across the sky, you could not help waiting, open-eyed and alert…
-- Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow, 1921

Gibbous entered English late 14th or early 15th century from the Latin gibbus meaning hump.

psaltery

psaltery \SAWL-tuh-ree\, noun:

1. an ancient musical instrument consisting of a flat sounding box with numerous strings which are plucked with the fingers or with a plectrum.
2. (initial capital letter) the Psalter.

Louise returned to her chair, and Eugénie took her psaltery from the floor, sat down and began to play.
-- Charles Gill, The Rich Woods, 2008

Then she heard music from beyond the arbor walk, a lighthearted turn on a psaltery...
-- Margaret Frazer, The Murderer's Tale, 1996

Psaltery came to English in the 14th century from the Greek psalterion meaning "stringed instrument."

od

od \od, ohd\, noun:

a hypothetical force formerly held to pervade all nature and to manifest itself in magnetism, mesmerism, chemical action, etc.

"I studied mind-cure, or metaphysical healing, which strikes at the root of disease; I went into hypnotism, mesmerism, and phreno-magnetism, and the od force—I don't suppose you know about the od which Reichenbach discovered."
-- Edward Eggleston, The Faith Doctor: a Story of New York, 1891

In these experiments, different substances from which the od was supposed to emanate were arranged on a collodion plate.
-- Edited by Clément Chéroux, The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult, 2005

The term od was coined by chemist and philosopher Karl Ludwig von Reichenbach as a name for his hypothetical force. He proposed the name od because he thought a short word starting with a vowel would be more easily combined in compound words.

lacerate

lacerate \LAS-uh-reyt\, verb:

1. to tear roughly; mangle: The barbed wire lacerated his hands.
2. to distress or torture mentally or emotionally; wound deeply; pain greatly: His bitter criticism lacerated my heart.

adjective:
1. lacerated.

She seemed to have the power still to lacerate him, inside his bowels. Not in his mind or spirit, but in his old emotional, passional self: right in the middle of his belly, to tear him and make him feel he bled inwardly.
-- D. H. Lawrence, The Plumed Serpent, 1926

For some weeks he confined the area of effeminacy to his left knee, and on one occasion he was base enough to lacerate the flesh in secret with a fish-hook in an attempt to justify the statement about his skin. 
-- Sylvia Townsend Warner, Mr. Fortune's Maggot, 1927

Lacerate entered English in the late 1500s from the Latin lacer meaning "mangled" or "torn."

cummerbund

cummerbund \KUHM-er-buhnd\, noun:

a wide sash worn at the waist, especially a horizontally pleated one worn with a tuxedo.

Wilson stood gloomily by his bed in the Bedford Hotel and contemplated his cummerbund, which lay ruffled like an angry snake…
-- Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter, 1948

He was now dressed for the evening, in a white tuxedo shirt, black cummerbund, and bowtie.
-- Tom Clancy, Rainbow Six, 1998

Cummerbund came to English in the 17th century from the Urdu and Persian kamarband, meaning "waistband."

impolitic

impolitic \im-POL-i-tik\, adjective:

not politic, expedient, or judicious.

"The cruelty, the impolitic cruelty," he replied, with great feeling, "of dividing, or attempting to divide, two young people long attached to each other, is terrible…"
-- Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, 1811

"From my point of view it might be impolitic," said Stephen. Jack looked at him, saw that the matter had to do with intelligence and nodded. "Are there any others you would object to?" he asked.
-- Patrick O'Brian, The Wine-Dark Sea, 1993

Impolitic combines the prefix im- meaning "not," with the Greek root politikos meaning "of citizens" or "pertaining to public life." It entered English around 1600.

dither

dither \DIHTH-er\, verb:

1. to act irresolutely; vacillate.
2. North England. to tremble with excitement or fear.

noun:
1. a trembling; vibration.
2. a state of flustered excitement or fear.

...his sense of being in an unfamiliar place, affected his powers of coordination, always weak, and he began to dither slightly, caught his foot against one of the legs of the bed, opened his arms to save his balance and so let fall his parcels.
-- Barry Unsworth, Mooncranker's Gift, 1973

You make mistakes, don't you--dither, get things wrong…?
-- Penelope Lively, Pack of Cards, 1978-86

Dither entered English in the 1600s. It's a phonetic variation of the Old English didder, though its ultimate origins are unknown.

jilt

jilt \jilt\, verb:

1. to reject or cast aside (a lover or sweetheart), especially abruptly or unfeelingly.

noun:
1. a woman who jilts a lover.

But for the sake of some of her relations, I shall give my fair jilt a feigned name.
-- Aphra Behn, The Fair Jilt, 1688

"...we know very well women scarcely ever jilt men; 'tis the men who jilt us."
-- Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd, 1874

The origin of jilt is uncertain, but it is perhaps from the Middle English gille meaning "lass" or "wench," which was a shortening of the women's name Gillian, a variant of Jill.

matador

matador \MAT-uh-dawr\, noun:

1. the principal bullfighter in a bullfight who passes the bull with a muleta and then, in many countries, kills it with a sword thrust; a torero.
2. one of the principal cards in skat and certain other games.
3. (initial capital letter) a jet-powered U.S. surface-to-surface missile.

He watched with disgust as the matador called to the bull. With a flamboyant flourish, the matador took over.
-- Tess Uriza Holthe, The Five-Forty-Five to Cannes, 2007

The matador who was ill was careful never to show it and was meticulous about eating a little of all the dishes that were presented at the table. 
-- Ernest Hemingway, "The Capital of the World," The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories, 1936

...the matador moved closer and now the animal bunched tired legs to run but one leg slipped throwing up a cloud of dust.
-- Jack Kerouac, Lonesome Traveller, 1960

Matador entered English in 1600s directly from the Spanish matar meaning "to kill or wound."

kloof

kloof \kloof\, noun:

(in South Africa) a deep glen; ravine.

There are the sheer kloofs cut in the hills by the rushing rains of centuries, down which the rivers sparkle...
-- H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines, 1885

Take any poor Tommy, out at his picket on the bare hillside or rocky kloof, either blistering in 104-degree heat or shivering under his waterproof sheet, and he could easily believe it so.
-- Giles Foden, Ladysmith, 1999

Kloof came to English in the 1700s from the Dutch word meaning "cleft."

helter-skelter

helter-skelter \HEL-ter-SKEL-ter\, adverb:

1. in headlong and disorderly haste: The children ran helter-skelter all over the house.
2. in a haphazard manner; without regard for order: Clothes were scattered helter-skelter about the room.

adjective:
1. carelessly hurried; confused: They ran in a mad, helter-skelter fashion for the exits.
2. disorderly; haphazard: Books and papers were scattered on the desk in a helter-skelter manner.

noun:
1. tumultuous disorder; confusion.

The same obstacle appeared in a minor degree to cling about his verbal exposition, and accounted perhaps for his rather helter-skelter choice of remarks bearing on the number of unaddressed letters sent to the post-office…
-- George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such, 1879

His enormous bellow of rage was the signal for Mrs. Hook to run helter-skelter down the alley to take up station in their traditional battleground at its entrance.
-- John Moore, Portrait of Elmbury, 1945

The origin of helter-skelter is unknown, though it is perhaps onomatopoetic. It entered English in the late 1500s and employs a reduplicated rhyme similar to the words hurry-scurry and harum-scarum.

finagle

finagle \fi-NEY-guhl\, verb:

1. to trick, swindle, or cheat (a person) (often followed by out of): He finagled the backers out of a fortune.
2. to get or achieve (something) by guile, trickery, or manipulation: to finagle an assignment to the Membership Committee.
3. to practice deception or fraud; scheme.

But the law's the law now, and not a contest between a lot of men paid to grin and lie and yell and finagle for whatever somebody wanted them to grin and lie and yell and finagle about.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano, 1952

The high school biology department had been given a gift of some three hundred hamsters for the purpose of dissection, and Jerry diligently finagled to collect the skins from the biology students…
-- Philip Roth, American Pastoral, 1997

Finagle likely comes from the English dialect term fainaigue meaning "to cheat." It entered English in the 1920s.

waif

waif \weyf\, noun:

1. a person, especially a child, who has no home or friends.
2. something found, especially a stray animal, whose owner is not known.
3. a stray item or article: to gather waifs of gossip.
4. Nautical. waft.

Cadet Blanchet almost forgot his rancour and no one at the mill knew of Mother Zabelle's project to send the waif back to the foundling hospital.
-- George Sand, The Country Waif, 1930

It wasn't any one thing that made a waif. Isobel was sure of that. It wasn't being crippled, or being in disgrace, or even not being married. It was a shameful thing to be a waif, but it was also mysterious.
-- Maeve Brennan, The Rose Garden: Short Stories, 2000

Waif likely finds its roots in the Old Norse veif meaning "waving thing" or "flag."

holograph

holograph \HOL-uh-graf, -grahf, HOH-luh-\, adjective:

1. wholly written by the person in whose name it appears: a holograph letter.

noun:
1. a holograph writing, as a deed, will, or letter.

The will was holograph, for Mr. Utterson, though he took charge of it now that it was made, had refused to lend the least assistance in the making of it...
-- Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 1886

"An unexpectedly thoughtful young man," said Chase, straightening the frame of (Queen Victoria's holograph letter. Originally, he had planned to put the Emerson autograph between those of Longfellow and Tennyson but then he had had second thoughts about keeping a valuable letter addressed not so much to him as the Secretary of the Treasury and so, with a sad heart, he handed it over to the Treasure archives...
-- Gore Vidal, Lincoln: A Novel, 1984

Holograph entered English in the 18th century from the Greek holos + graph, meaning "whole written."

eyetooth

eyetooth \AHY-tooth\, noun:

1. Dentistry. a canine tooth of the upper jaw: so named from its position under the eye.

idiom:
1. cut one's eyeteeth, a. to gain sophistication or experience; become worldly-wise. b. Also, cut one's eyeteeth on. to be initiated or gain one's first experience in (a career, hobby, skill, etc.).
2. give one's eyeteeth, to give something one considers very precious, usually in exchange for an object or situation one desires: She would give her eyeteeth for that job.

Arn Debs wears a bridge from eyetooth to eyetooth.
-- Martin Amis, Night Train, 2011

It is true that a handful of writers have cut their eyeteeth on newspapers and then gone on to larger business, but they are exceptions to an inflexible rule.
-- Ring Lardner, Introduction by Jonathan Yardley, "Introduction," Selected Stories, 1997

Eyetooth came to English in the late 1500s as a blend of eye and tooth. This tooth received its name because of its position beneath or next to the eye.

hyperhidrosis

hyperhidrosis \hahy-per-hi-DROH-sis\, noun:

abnormally excessive sweating.

"I have hyperhidrosis," Tinkle said. "What's hyperhidrosis?" I asked. "I sweat too much." "Were you actually diagnosed by a doctor?" "Yes." "How do you get hyperhidrosis?" "Genetics. And stress. Stress sets up the genetics."
-- Jonathan Ames, Wake Up, Sir!, 2004

Outside the Riviera, where the air is hot enough to give me hyperhidrosis, everyone gives the driver a two or three dollar tip.
-- William T. Vollmann, Thirteen Stories and Thirteen Epitaphs, 1991

Hyperhidrosis comes directly from the Greek meaning "excessive sweating." It entered English in the late 1800s.

rarefied

rarefied \RAIR-uh-fahyd\, adjective:

1. extremely high or elevated; lofty; exalted: the rarefied atmosphere of a scholarly symposium.
2. of, belonging to, or appealing to an exclusive group; select; esoteric: rarefied tastes.

A fire then being made in any chimney, the air over the fire is rarefied by the heat, becomes lighter and therefore immediately rises in the funnel, and goes out...
-- Benjamin Franklin, Observations and Experiments, 1744-1785

She and Adam had one thing in common--they were both fine-drawn and rarefied--not much clogged with fleshly appetites.
-- John Buchan, A Prince of Captivity, 1933

Rarefied entered English in the late 1300s from the Latin rarus + facere meaning "to make rare."

spigot

spigot \SPIG-uht\, noun:

1. a small peg or plug for stopping the vent of a cask.
2. a peg or plug for stopping the passage of liquid in a faucet or cock.
3. a faucet or cock for controlling the flow of liquid from a pipe or the like.
4. the end of a pipe that enters the enlarged end of another pipe to form a joint.

The gray hut is five feet away, a raised window above the spigot of the hose.
-- Christopher Bram, Gods and Monsters, 1995

He worked his way around the trunk until he found a spigot. He turned it on and caught a little fluid in the palm of one hand. He sipped it.
-- Piers Anthony, Two to the Fifth, 2008

Spigot came to English in the late 14th century from the Latin spica meaning "ear of grain." It shares its root with the word spike.

lam

lam \lam\, verb:

1. to beat; thrash.
2. to beat; strike; thrash (usually followed by out or into).

Like kingpins, one steel tier lammed into another, then they all crashed to the floor with a sound as of the roof falling.
-- Richard Wright, Black Boy, 1945

That was just before he lammed out—the time he knocked off that crumb from uptown. I remember once when Harry cut up a guy so bad, the guy couldn't walk.
-- Ed McBain, Learning to Kill, 2006

Lam likely finds its roots in the Old Norse lemja meaning "to lame." It entered English in the late 16th century.

bemused

bemused \bih-MYOOZD\, adjective:

1. bewildered or confused.
2. lost in thought; preoccupied.

He was not only bemused by the voice he had heard. He was bemused by to the very grandeur of the position which he aspired.
-- Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men, 1946

She said nothing else, she just watched his quiet bemused and intent face as he plumbed his empty pockets one by one.
-- William Faulkner, Pylon, 1935

Bemused comes from the Old French muser meaning "to ponder," "dream" or "waste time." It entered English in the late 1800s, though the verb form bemuse has existed in English since the early-to-mid 1700s.