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.