orrery

orrery \AWR-uh-ree, OR-\, noun:

1. an apparatus for representing the positions, motions, and phases of the planets, satellites, etc., in the solar system.
2. any of certain similar machines, as a planetarium.

For part of the clock was an orrery: a mechanical model of the solar system that displayed the current positions of the planets and many of their moons.
-- Neal Stephenson, Anathem, 2010

But now he lies in hospital, mortally ill; and while his orrery still rests on the grand cherrywood desk, his photograph still hangs on the office wall (smiling mirthlessly, like a king who has wearied of his crown) and his iridescent fish still shimmer through the gloom of the aquarium on the dresser, his many bookcases are empty, save for dust and a single stress-busting executive toy like a hastily planted flag.
-- Paul Murray, Skippy Dies, 2010

Orrery is an eponym named after Charles Boyle, Earl of Orrery. Orrery was the patron of George Graham who created a mechanical model of solar system. It entered English in the early 1700s.

joggle

joggle \JOG-uhl\, verb:

1. to shake slightly; move to and fro, as by repeated jerks; jiggle: She joggled the key in the lock a couple of times before getting the door open.
2. to cause to shake or totter as by a sudden, slight push; jostle.
3. to join or fasten by fitting a projection into a recess.
4. to fit or fasten with dowels.
5. to move irregularly; have a jogging or jolting motion; shake.

noun:
1. the act of joggling.
2. a slight shake or jolt.
3. a moving with jolts or jerks.
4. a projection on one of two joining objects fitting into a corresponding recess in the other to prevent slipping.
5. Carpentry. an enlarged area, as of a post or king post, for supporting the foot of a strut, brace, etc.

These brothers, Harman and Irwin, have a kind of hopping, tiptoe gait, making the casket joggle on the flatbed and creep steadily toward the back edge.
-- Edited by Michelle Barry, The Notebooks, 2010

Pru sits on the hard settee—uncushioned perhaps to discourage loiterers—and tries to murmur and joggle Roy into calm again.
-- John Updike, Rabbit at Rest, 1990

Joggle is of unknown origin. It may be a diminutive form of the common word jog. It has been used in English since the early 1500s.

dissilient

dissilient \dih-SIL-ee-uhnt\, adjective:

bursting apart; bursting open.

I imagined the dissilient pod of rumours a creative bureau chief up for promotion might hatch. Stories, once sprung, would snowball out of control, growing more damaging with each repetition.
-- Susan Daitch, L.C., 2002

The court was dissilient, generationally fractured, manned (as it were) by an increasingly impatient and acquisitive nobility.
-- Eric Scott Mallin, Inscribing the Time, 1995

Dissilent comes from the Latin word dissilīre meaning "to leap apart."

anfractuous

anfractuous \an-FRAK-choo-uhs\, adjective:

characterized by windings and turnings; sinuous; circuitous: an anfractuous path.

Down high anfractuous rocks flowed the odor of rotten eggs from nests deserted by the hawks.
-- Jean Giono, The Horseman on the Roof, 1982

At the foot of this anfractuous path which leads to the summit of Sam's Island lies the incredible Black Bay.
-- Ishmael Reed, The Free-Lance Pallbearers, 1967

Anfractuous is a back formation of the word anfractuosity meaning "a winding bend."

bordereau

bordereau \bawr-duh-ROH; Fr. bawr-duh-ROH\, noun:

a detailed memorandum, especially one in which documents are listed.

At the War Office, Dreyfus was told to take a letter from dictation, "'so phrased as to include some passages'" from the bordereau.
-- Richard Clark Sterne, Dark Mirror, 1994

"We need a photograph of the bordereau," he said when he met Dubon at his office that evening.
-- Kate Taylor, A Man in Uniform, 2011

Bordereau comes from the French word of the same spelling, which is a diminutive form of the French word for board. It entered English in the late 1800s.

ikat

ikat \ee-kaht\, noun:

1. a method of printing woven fabric by tie-dyeing the warp yarns (warp ikat), the weft yarns (weft ikat), or both (double ikat) before weaving.
2. a fabric made by this method.

I saw a collection of monumental tombs and watched a group of village ikat weavers using plants like indigo leaf to dye and make the fabric I'd always admired.
-- Carol Field, Mangoes and Quince, 2008

"Ikat," said Glenda. "From Bali. The most romantic place on the planet." Counting out the money, Simone discovered that she had only one more dollar than the scarf cost, with tax.
-- Francine Prose, Primitive People, 1992

Ikat is derived from the Malay word meaning "to tie" because of the method of dyeing. It entered English in the 1930s.

bauble

bauble \BAW-buhl\, noun:

1. a showy, usually cheap, ornament; trinket; gewgaw.
2. a jester's scepter.

From his pocket, he got out a small glittering bauble, carefully wrapped in translucent brown fiber.
-- Philip K. Dick, The World Jones Made, 1956

She had no temptation for such an action; as to the bauble on which the chief proof rests, if she had earnestly desired it, I should have willingly given it to her, so much do I esteem and value her.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818

Bauble is related to the Old French word bibelot, meaning "a small object of curiosity, beauty or rarity."

peplum

peplum \PEP-luhm\, noun:

1. a short full flounce or an extension of a garment below the waist, covering the hips.
2. a short skirt attached to a bodice or jacket.
3. Obsolete. a peplos.

It had a straight skirt and a peplum on the jacket and, truly, it seemed to have been made for me.
-- Jodi Picoult, Harvesting the Heart, 1995

Kathleen is wearing what she went out in the night before, a green peplum jacket over a swingy skirt.
-- Elinor Lipman, The Ladies' Man, 1998

Peplum is derived from the word of Greek origin peplos which refers to a loose-fitting garment worn by women in Ancient Greece.

gingham

gingham \GING-uhm\, noun:

yarn-dyed, plain-weave cotton fabric, usually striped or checked.

It was gingham, with checks of white and blue; and although the blue was somewhat faded with many washings, it was still a pretty frock.
-- L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz, 1900

Country curtains at the windows, blue gingham with a row of yellow daisies to trim the hem, and white cotton balls fringed the edges.
-- V.C. Andrews, Dark Angel, 1986

Gingham is derived from the Malay word ginggang which means "striped cloth." It entered English via the Dutch word gingang.

habiliment

habiliment \huh-BIL-uh-muhnt\, noun:

1. Usually, habiliments. a. clothes or clothing. b. clothes as worn in a particular profession, way of life, etc.
2. habiliments, accouterments or trappings.

At this very moment, perhaps, Toad is busy arraying himself in those singularly hideous habiliments so dear to him, which transform him from a (comparatively) good-looking Toad into an Object which throws any decent-minded animal that comes across it into a violent fit.
-- Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, 1908

It deepened; it purified. It lost its previous comedic habiliments, its air of shtick, and became unadulterated, lethal, pure despair.
-- Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot, 2011

Habiliment comes from the French word of the same spelling. It's from the root habiller meaning "to dress."

skedaddle

skedaddle \ski-DAD-l\, verb:

1. to run away hurriedly; flee.

noun:
1. a hasty flight.

"We don't have time to waste today, Eddie," she told him abruptly. "Now get your coffee and skedaddle."
-- Katherine Hall Page, The Body in the Bouillon, 1992

They just used to skedaddle off to work — I've seen hundreds of 'em, bit of breakfast in hand, running wild and shining to catch their little season-ticket train, for fear they'd get dismissed if they didn't; working at businesses they were afraid to take the trouble to understand...
-- H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, 1898

Skedaddle is an Americanism that arose in the 1860s. It may be related to the Scottish dialect word of the same spelling meaning "to spill, scatter."

serotinal

serotinal \si-ROT-n-l, ser-uh-TAHYN-l\, adjective:

pertaining to or occurring in late summer.

The night condenses into me, allays the bonds of my serotinal blight. Count Dracula and I share in this flight: we seek moist shadows underneath the quays, in marrow-darkness bid our bodies twist.
-- Philip K. Jason, Near the Fire, 1983

Botanists use the word serotinous to describe late-blossoming, and serotinal refers to the late-summer season of the year, especially used in descriptions of life-histories of freshwater organisms (Allaby 1985).
-- Robert J. Whelan, The Ecology of Fire, 1995

In these population dynamic trends obvious differences exist between the aestival and serotinal aspects.
-- Acta Entomologica Bohemoslovaca, 1986

Serotinal entered English in the early twentieth century. It is derived from the Latin word sērōtinus meaning "late of time."

pari passu

pari passu \PAH-ree PAHS-soo; Eng. PAIR-ahy PAS-oo, PAIR-ee\, adverb:

1. with equal pace or progress; side by side.
2. without partiality; equably; fairly.

But the ingenious machinery contrived by the Gods for reducing human possibilities of amelioration to a minimum—which arranges that wisdom to do shall come pari passu with the departure of zest for doing—stood in the way of all that.
-- Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge, 1886

Man who falls victim to transcendence as the spirit of abstraction, i.e., elevates self to posture over and against world which is pari passu demoted to immanence and seen as exemplar and specimen and coordinate, and who is not at same time compensated by beauty of motion of method of science, has no choice but to seek reentry into immanent world qua immanence.
-- Walker Percy, The Last Gentleman, 1966

Pari passu comes directly from the Latin phrase of the same spelling. It commonly meant "simultaneously" and literally meant "with equal step."

auspicate

auspicate \AW-spi-keyt\, verb:

to initiate with ceremonies calculated to ensure good luck; inaugurate.

We decided to auspicate our love. The Naga reached up to the skies with only a fraction of its length and brought down the holiest of the holy temples and we floated inside it.
-- Adam Zameenad, Cyrus Cyrus, 1991

Here at the center of the nation beneath the portals of the capital let us solemnly auspicate the new era of violated promises and tarnished faith.
-- Everett O. Campbell, The Eagle Flies at Dawn, 1989

Auspicate comes from the Latin word auspicious meaning "divination from the flight of birds." This term entered English in the early 1600s.

corsair

corsair \KAWR-sair\, noun:

1. a pirate, especially formerly of the Barbary Coast.
2. a fast ship used for piracy.
3. (initial capital letter) Military. a gull-winged, propeller-driven fighter plane built for the U.S. Navy in World War II and kept in service into the early 1950s.

The cassique of Kiawah is already known to us, and we may well conceive that he bore himself toward the little wife of the famouscorsair with all proper kindliness. 
-- William Glimore Simms, The Cassique of Kiawah: A Colonial Romance, 1859

We were five days at sea in the situation I have just described, and the captain entertained hopes of making the desired port in two days more, when a vessel was descried bearing down upon us, which proved to be an Algerine corsair…
-- Francis Lathom, The Mysterious Freebooter, or The Days of Queen Bess, 1806

Corsair came to English in the 16th century from the medieval Latin cursus meaning "hostile voyage."

gynarchy

gynarchy \JIN-er-kee, GAHY-ner-, JAHY-ner-\, noun:

government by women.

They—for it is a triplicate Gynarchy—still rule over a very large portion of territory and enjoy a subsidy from the government... 
-- George Alexander Lethbridge Banbury, Sierra Leone: or, The White Man's Grave, 1888

"But I have heard of—of gynarchy, I believe they call it." "You mean petticoat government?" "Yes."
-- edited by D. L. Cease, "Her Bright Smile," The Railroad Trainman's Journal, 1894

Gynarchy entered English in the late 1500s from the Greek gyne + -arkhe literally meaning "woman rule."