implacable

implacable \im-PLAK-uh-bull\, adjective:

Not placable; not to be appeased; incapable of being pacified; inexorable; as, an implacable foe.

For it is my office to prosecute the guilty with implacable zeal.
-- Paola Capriolo, Floria Tosca (translated by Liz Heron)

He... then continued on up the road, his shoulders bent beneath the implacable sun.
-- Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Fencing Master

She conducted her life and her work with all the steady and implacable seriousness of a steamroller.
-- "The Stein Salon Was The First Museum of Modern Art", New York Times, December 1, 1968

Implacable ultimately comes from Latin implacabilis, from in-, not + placabilis, placable, from placo, placare, to soothe, calm, appease.

officious

officious \uh-FISH-uhs\, adjective:

Marked by excessive eagerness in offering services or advice where they are neither requested nor needed; meddlesome.

Ian Holm plays a well-meaning but officious lawyer who tries to make the grieving families sue for damages.
-- John Simon, "Minus Four", National Review, February 9, 1998

The guy was an officious twerp, but Luke and Pete were vagrants, and a railroad employee had the right to throw them out.
-- Ken Follett, Code to Zero

Why don't you mind your own business, ma'am? roared Bounderby. "How dare you go and poke your officious nose into my family affairs?"
-- Charles Dickens, Hard Times

Officious comes from Latin officiosus, obliging, dutiful, from officium, dutiful action, sense of duty, official employment, from opus, a work, labor + -ficere, combining form of facere, to do, to make. It is related to official, of or pertaining to an office or public trust.

rubicund

rubicund \ROO-bih-kund\, adjective:

Inclining to redness; ruddy; red.

The men are second cousins, around forty, resembling each other not very much, one taller and leaner, less rubicund than the other, who has just returned from California.
-- John Lukacs, A Thread of Years

Rubicund from his cocktail, big, broad, lustrous with power, he exuded what Walter Pater called the "charm of an exquisite character, felt in some way to be inseparable from his person."
-- Edmund Morris, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan

Rubicund comes from Latin rubicundus, "red, ruddy," from rubere, "to be red."

volte-face

volte-face \vawlt-FAHS; vawl-tuh-\, noun:

An about-face; a reversal, as in policy or opinion.

I was eventually eased out of the organisation, but not before British policy had performed a volte-face on Cyprus, the colony had gained independence, and yesterday's political wisdoms had suddenly been repudiated.
-- George Urban, Radio Free Europe and the Pursuit of Democracy

In a sudden volte-face, he seemed to accept the agreement; then, when the besieged forces came out to embark, he had their barges held in port.
-- Richard Eder, "Just Wild About Horatio", New York Times, November 7, 1999

Suddenly confronted with the imminent ruin of Angela Lyne, his former mistress, who is drinking herself to death out of loneliness, he does the first real volte-face of his life by returning to her.
-- L.E. Sissman, "Evelyn Waugh: The Height of His Powers", The Atlantic, March 1972

Volte-face comes from French, from Italian voltafaccia, from volta, "turn" + faccia, "face."

littoral

littoral \LIH-tuh-rul\, adjective:

1. Of, relating to, or on a coastal or shore region, especially a seashore.
2. A coastal region, especially the zone between the limits of high and low tides.

Professor Henslow tells me, he believes that nearly all the plants which I brought from these islands, are common littoral species in the East Indian archipelago.
-- Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle

A country that is landlocked or has few neighbors will be more vulnerable than one that is littoral or extensive.
-- Franklin L. Lavin,, "Asphyxiation or Oxygen? The Sanctions Dilemma", Foreign Policy, September-October 1996

Like 49ers staking claims in California, the five littoral nations have asserted overlapping territorial claims in the Caspian itself.
-- Richard Stone, "Caspian Ecology Teeters On the Brink", Science, January 18, 2002

As the Portuguese moved south along the Upper Guinea Coast along the littoral of Sierra Leone, a region known as the Windward Coast, they entered another major area of rice cultivation.
-- Judith A. Carney, Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas

Littoral derives from Latin littoralis, litoralis, from litor-, litus, "the seashore."

donnybrook

donnybrook \DON-ee-brook\, noun:

1. A brawl; a free-for-all.
2. A heated quarrel or dispute.

But this was the beginning of Tommy's years of fighting back, a period that ended in a donnybrook conducted all over the O'Connor house.
-- Tracy Kidder, Home Town

Wine and talk flow freely, so much so that the meal ends with a Rooney family donnybrook over, typically enough, religion and politics.
-- Howard Frank Mosher, "24 Hours in Due East, S.C.", New York Times, April 7, 1991

The author finds few villains in "West Virginia's Battle of the Books," which describes a donnybrook over the content of public school textbooks during the mid-70's in the "seemingly placid community" of Charleston, W.Va.
-- Kaye Northcott, "Round Up the Usual Enigmas", New York Times, February 23, 1992

A donnybrook is so called after Donnybrook, Ireland, a suburb of Dublin that once held an annual fair known for its brawls.

slugabed

slugabed \SLUHG-uh-bed\, noun:

One who stays in bed until a late hour; a sluggard.

Nemecek's business is not for slugabeds. He opens for business every weekday at 4 a.m.
-- Drew Fetherston, "He Can Really Make Pigs Fly", Newsday, December 12, 1994

I found Oriana, as usual, up before me, for I always was a sad slugabed.
-- W. Hurton, Doomed Ship

All save Whit elected to sleep in that morning. Whit came back to report that he had spotted the tracks of a doe and a fawn made in the new snow directly beneath my unoccupied stand, and I regretted being a slugabed.
-- "Paying Tribute to Deer in Minnesota Woods", New York Times, December 6, 1998

Slugabed is from slug, "sluggard" + abed, "in bed."