• abattoir: A slaughterhouse.
• adit: An almost horizontal entrance to a mine. "To the north were the mines themselves: dangerous, undershored scratch drifts that went down fifty feet or so and then spread like fingers clutching for gold and silver and copper and the occasional nest of firedims. From the outside they were just holes punched into the bare and rocky earth, holes like staring eyes, each with its own pile of till and scrapings beside the adit." From Wizard and Glass by Stephen King.
• amphora: an ancient Greek or Roman two-handled narrow-necked jar for oil, wine, etc. "He might just as well have fallen in love with a painting of a nymph or a Greek amphora." From The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.
• anathema: a person or thing detested or loathed. "She made coffee, went to the post office, and took care of the copying, but conventional office hours or work routines were anathema to her." From The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.
• argot: A specialized vocabulary or set of idioms used by a particular group. "There were certain ways of referring to things in the gang Henry was a part of (and which Eddie, as his little brother, was also a part of); the argot of their miserable little ka-tet . From Wizard and Glass by Stephen King.
• arroyo: A brook; a creek. "Her eyes moved from side to side in small, shooting peeks. Scraggle-headed and tremble-mouthed, she looked like a diseased coyote driven into its final arroyo." From Wizard and Glass by Stephen King.
• ascetic: self denying; austere ALSO: one who leads a life of strict self-denial, especially for religious purposes. "It's lips were thin and ascetic, and its eyes were a demons eyes: they had seen too much and gone too far, and under their gaze he felt less important than a fly." From Other People by Neil Gaiman
• asperity: roughness or harshness; sharpness of temper. "But here he was set right by Mrs. Bennet, who assured him with some asperity that they were very well able to keep a good cook, and that her daughters had nothing to do in the kitchen." From Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• atoll: a ring shaped coral island surrounding a lagoon. "Some time later the islanders on a little rimward atoll were amazed to find, washed into their little local lagoon, the wave-rocked corpse of a hideous sea monster, all beaks, eyes and tentacles." From The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett
• avuncular: of, pertaining to, or characteristic of an uncle. "There was a brief, embarrassed silence before Frode finally turned to Salander and tried to repair the damage by assuming a friendly, avuncular tone." From The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.
• banal: devoid of freshness or originality; hackneyed; trite. "It was too banal too be true." From The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.
• barbican: A tower or other fortification on the approach to a castle or town, especially one at a gate or drawbridge. "Ahead, a vast grilled barrier like a castle barbican swam out of the gloom...and beyond it, they caught their first glimpse of Blaine the Mono." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• barony: The domain of a baron. "Once they were tame, and every barony had half a dozen roaming around the castle or manor-house." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• barrister: in England, a lawyer who pleads cases in court. "They went inside: down wooden steps to a cellar where rubicund barristers drank side by side with pallid money market fund managers." From Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
• besom: A bundle of twigs attached to a handle and used as a broom. "It is unlikely that Rhea would have seen Susan's face through the dense overgrowth of pig ivy even if the old besom had been looking in that direction, and she wasn't." From Wizard and Glass by Stephen King.
• bowdlerized: to expurgate--to remove passages considered obscene, etc. from a book, etc. "...and how the Grimms' stories were collected for adults and, when the Grimms realized the books were being read in the nursery, were bowdlerized to make them more appropriate." From The Problem of Susan by Neil Gaiman
• brassica: any plant belonging to the genus Brassica, of the mustard family, including many economically important vegetables, as cabbage, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, turnip, and mustard. "It was an inn, and inside there were people having a good time, or what passed for a good time if you were a peasant who spent most of your time closely concerned with cabbages. Compared to brassicas, practically anything is fun." From Mort by Terry Prachett
• brazier:a metal container to hold burning coals ALSO: a person who works in brass. "The room was long and the demon waited by a smoking brazier." From Other People by Neil Gaiman
• bursar: a treasurer or business officer, especially at a college or university; a university (scholarship) student. "The bursar cupped his hands and shouted." From The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett
• cachinnate: to laugh loudly or immoderately. "A weird cachinnation came from the ruined abbey: it rent the night air, ascending into a peal of manic glee." From Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire by Neil Gaiman
• cadre: a group of trained or otherwise qualified personnel capable of forming, training, or leading an expanded organization, as a religious or political faction, or a skilled work force. "The roaming bands of wilder partisans--Green and Blue each had their violent cadres--tended to ignore the patrols..." from G.G.Kay's Sailing to Sarantium.
• caisson: A watertight structure within which construction work is carried on under water. "Eddie peered at the huge concrete caissons to which the main cables were anchored and thought the one on the right side of the bridge looked as if it had been pulled part way out of the earth." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• calid: Hot; burning; ardent. "The wall of the vast room, which were steaming with calid moisture, were built with gray slabs of stone and were the personal concern of a company of eighteen men known as the 'Gray Scrubbers.'" From Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake.
• calliope: A musical instrument fitted with steam whistles, played from a keyboard. The carousel's very silence, its flashing lights and steamy calliope music stilled forever, gave Jake a chill." From Wizard and Glass by Stephen King.
• callow: immature; inexperienced. "I have seen them, first hand, their callow, empty lives." From Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
• capstan: any various windlasses, rotated in a horizontal plane by hand or machinery, for winding in ropes, cables, etc. "'I mean it!' screamed Bethan, spinning Rincewind around by his arm, like a capstan." From The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett.
• caroming: to strike and rebound. "It flailed aimlessly about the camp, knocking over a rack of curing hides, stamping flat the little shelter she shared with Eddie, caroming off trees." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• Cayuse: A horse, especially an Indian pony. "And where's the horse that could support him through a day of range-riding? Roland thought. I'd like to see the cut of that Cayuse." From Wizard and Glass by Stephen King.
• celerity: swiftness, speed. "I think it vitally important that you are encouraged to return to your own house with all celerity." From Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman.
• chitin: the tough, horny outer covering of insects, crustaceans, etc. "...huge hairy spiders and elegant chitinous spiders." From Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
• cognoscenti: persons who have superior knowledge and understanding of a particular field, esp. in the fine arts, literature, and world of fashion. "He silently cursed Wa, whose own skill at switching dice was equally notorious among the cognoscenti..." From Mort by Terry Prachett
• corpulent: fat, obese
• coruscate: To give forth flashes of light; sparkle and glitter. "His senses seemed more acute than ever before in his life; he saw billions of coruscating sparks in the pavement, smelled a thousand mixed aromas in every breath he took, and seemed to hear other sounds, secret sounds, within each of the sounds he heard." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• daguerreotype: An early photographic process with the image made on a light-sensitive silver-coated metallic plate. "A door stood open on the right. Beside it, thumb-tacked to the wall, was a faded daguerreotype which showed a hanged man dangling like a piece of rotten fruit from a dead tree." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• delphic: oracular; obscure; ambiguous. "When she was asked why the previous year's expose of Wennerstrom had been such a fiasco, she was even more delphic." From The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.
• denouement: the final resolution of the intricacies of a plot, as of a drama or novel. "He waited until 10:00 p.m. before he gave up and drove back to Norsjo, where he had a late dinner and then went to bed to read the denouement of Val McDermid's novel." From The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.
• desultorily: In a desultory manner; without method; loosely; immethodically. "A few young women were walking along, pushing baby-carriages in pairs and talking desultorily, but the street was otherwise deserted."
• drogue: A drag, usually a canvas-covered conical frame, floating behind a vessel to prevent drifting or to maintain a heading into the wind. "If we had two more in our party, I'd put Jake in a moving box with guns on every side of him. Since we don't, we'll move in column--me first, Jake pushing Susannah behind, and you on drogue." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• drumlin: An elongated hill or ridge of glacial drift. There were standing at a point where the Great Road crested a long, rolling drumlin which ran diagonally across the plain like a wrinkle in the world's biggest bedspread." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• dudgeon: A sullen, angry, or indignant humor. "Musty shied back, hissing like a kettle, and stalked in dudgeon to the hummock which marked the very tip of Coos Hill." From Wizard and Glass by Stephen King.
• effrontery: shameless or impudent boldness; barefaced audacity. "She could have him taken and garrotted for his effrontery." From The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay
• eldritch: eerie; weird; spooky. "He was afraid of the darkness which lived within that eldritch column [. . .]." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• enervating: tending to deprive of strength or vitality; physically or mentally weakening; debilitating. "During the past year Blomkvist had often regretted that they had hired Dahlman, who had an enervating habit of looking at everything in as negative a light as possible." From The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.
• exiguous: scanty; meager; small; slender. "She had a rudimentary knowledge of the law--it was a subject she had never had occasion to explore--and her faith in the police was generally exiguous." From The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.
• fakement: Any act of deceit, fraud, swindling, or thieving; the act of begging under false pretenses; also, a device by which fraud is effected. "He wiggled the hand he held in the air. 'It's all the same jolly fakement to me, one way or t'other.'" From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• fatuity: Smug stupidity; utter foolishness. "'Hear, hear,' Mayor Thorin said in a voice that strove for the high ground of solemnity and fell with a splash into fatuity instead." From Wizard and Glass by Stephen King.
• fen: Low, flat, swampy land; a bog or marsh. "Its silvery blackness was all around them now, as if the whole world had turned into a flat Norfolk fen at dawn." From Wizard and Glass by Stephen King.
• filching: stealing "I was filching." From A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.
• fractious: readily angered; peevish; irritable; quarrelsome. "He had not forgotten that apprentice gunslingers were fractious and high-spirited, nervy and apt to bite exactly at the wrong moment." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• friable: easily crumbled or reduced to powder; crumbly. "A clear stream ran out of the woods and across the center of the clearing, first bubbling through a deep channel in the spongy earth and friable stone, then pouring across the splintery rock floor which sloped down to the place where the land dropped away." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• gallimaufry: a hodgepodge; jumble; confused medley. "Every family had a few skeletons in their cupboards, but the Vanger family had an entire gallimaufry of them." From The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.
• garotted:to strangle in a surprise attack. "I garotted him with his Guards tie." From Keepsake and Treasures by Neil Gaiman
• gnomon: the raised part of a sundial that casts a shadow. "...the shadow of the mountain scythed across the landscape like the gnomon of God's sundial." From The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett
• halberd: A weapon of the 15th and 16th centuries having an axlike blade and a steel spike mounted on the end of a long shaft. "Yes he knows that, somehow. This is the place of slaughtered soldiers, the cloven helm, the rusty halberd; from here come the pale warriors." From Wizard and Glass by Stephen King
• hasp: a hinged fastening for a door, etc., especially a metal piece fitted over a staple and fastened as by a bolt or padlock. "Atop the center of the ship was a large round bronze hatch with hasps around it." From The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett
• hegemony: leadership or dominance, especially that of one state or nation over others. "Together, although as part of a much larger party, they traveled to Barcelona in order to protest the unstoppable flood of international capitalism and to register stern protests at corporate hegemonies." From Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
• impecunious: Lacking money; penniless. "The jug was labeled fairly enough--CAMEL PISS--and a double shot could be obtained for three pennies. It was a drink only for the reckless or the impecunious, but a fair number of both passed beneath the stern gaze of The Romp each night; Stanley rarely had a problem emptying the jug." From Wizard and Glass by Stephen King.
• impelled: driven or urged forward; pressed on; incited or constrained to action. "Something wrong with his mind, something as simple as his nature and as strange as the weird, wandering life into which that nature had impelled him." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• inchoate: not yet completed or fully developed; rudimentary. "[...] it was there in the fire, burning out in triumph and some wonderful, inchoate defiance, declaring that despair was a mirage and death a dream." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• indomitable: not easily discouraged or defeated. "But above all of them ranked the chickadee because of its indomitable spirit." From The Tracker by Tom Brown
• inimical: Unfriendly; hostile. "Roland had never in his life seen such animals or countryside, and it made his skin want to crawl right off his flesh. It was inimical, but that was not the problem. It was alien--_that_ was the problem. From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• invective: Denunciatory or abusive language, expression or discourse. "She got to her feet when she saw Jake, but she did not leap to her feet; neither did she pelt across to the foyer so she could cover him with kisses and invective." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• macadam: Pavement made of layers of compacted broken stone, now usually bound with tar or asphalt. "Eddie started pushing Susannah along the smooth macadam of the parking lot again, pointing to cars as they passed them." From Wizard and Glass by Stephen King.
• meerschaum: a white, claylike, heat-resistant mineral used for tobacco pipes, etc; a pipe made of this. "Down on the desk, unwatched, his fingers were kneading the blue Plasticine into the shape of a meerschaum." From Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman.
• megrims: Depression, low spirits, unhappiness. "And, she supposed, it really hadn't been such a bad idea; if nothing else, it had kept the worst of her megrims away." From Wizard and Glass by Stephen King.
• mendacity: A lie; a falsehood. "He spoke in the hoarse, cadenced tones of a lifelong teller of tales--one of those devine fools born to merge memory and mendacity into dreams as airily gorgeous as cobwebs strung with drops of dew." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• mortise: a hole or recess cut in a piece of wood, to receive a projecting part shaped to fit into it. "To put it bluntly, entire ships had been mortised artfully together and converted into buildings." From The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett
• munificent: extremely liberal in giving; very generous. Came across this word while looking up synonyms for sumptuous
• nictitating: winking. "She blinked, as a nictitating python might blink before striking." From Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman.
• nonce: The present or particular occasion. "But for the nonce she only stood there, biting her lower lip." From Wizard and Glass by Stephen King.
• ovoid: egg-shaped; having the solid form of an egg. "That was the way my mind lurched and stumbled, among the sharp R's and T's, sliding over the ovoid vowels as if on pebbles." From A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.
• palaver: Idle chatter. "We could do with a little palaver." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• panegyric: a formal speech or piece of writing praising a person or event; high praise. "This naturally introduced a panegyric from Jane on his diffidence and the little value he put on his own good qualities." From Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• paroxysm: any sudden, violent outburst; a fit of violent action or emotion. "Dear god, she thought shakily, enduring a paroxysm of self-condemnation." From The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay
• pennon: A pennant, banner, or flag. "Later, the two of them had walked the high battlements above Mid-World's last living city--green and gorgeous Gilead in the morning sun, with its pennons flapping and the vendors in the streets of the Old Quarter and horses trotting on the bridle paths which radiated out from the palace standing at the heart of everything." From Wizard and Glass by Stephen King.
• penury: extreme poverty "A few of the more daring members of the Gamblers' Guild had once experimented with a form of worship, in the deepest cellars of Guild headquarters, and had all died of penury, murder or just Death within the week." From The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett.
• perspicacious: having keen mental perception and understanding; discerning. "That was pretty perspicacious of you. How did you know?" From Mort by Terry Prachett.
• phaeton: a light, four-wheeled carriage; an early type of open automobile. "But she is perfectly amiable, and often condescends to drive by my humble abode in her little phaeton and ponies." From Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• phalanx: an ancient close-ranked infantry formation; any massed group. "A feathered phalanx huge as the side of a skyscraper..." From Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman.
• plangent: resounding loudly, especially with a plaintive sound, like a bell. "Then there was a plangent, sweet twanging noise..." From The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett
• plinth: the square block at the base of a column, pedestal, etc. "They managed to turn without really moving, like a couple of statues revolving on plinths." From The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett
• plumb-bob: A conoid-shaped metal bob or weight attached to the end of a plumb-line: A cord or line to one end of which is attached a metal bob or weight, used to determine vertical direction, depth of water, etc. "Now he could see other spiders in the kitchen doorway. Some hung on almost invisible silken threads like obscene plumb-bobs; others simply dropped on the floor in a series of muddy plops and scuttered eagerly over to greet him." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• propinquital: propinquity: Kinship. "As objects of beauty, these works held little interest for him, and yet in spite of himself he had become attached in a propinquital way to a few of the carvings." From Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake.
• pugnacious: inclined to quarrel or fight readily; quarrelsome; belligerent; combative. "After a while they begin to lean toward each other, thrusting their faces pugnaciously forward, bathing each other with a fine mist of outraged spittle." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• puissance: Power; might. "Important people came in from the farther corners of the Barony, and there were a good many Conversationals leading up to the main Conversational on Reaping Day. Susan was expeccted to be present at these--mostly as a decorative testimony to the Mayor's continuing puissance." From Wizard and Glass by Stephen King.
• puling: Complaining; whining; crying; childish; weak. "I understand that whining and puling won't solve your problem." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• recrudescent: breaking out again or reemerging after temporary abatement or suppression.
• redoubt: A protected place of refuge or defense. "There was an inner redoubt of dark blue glass--it was a color Jake associated with the bottles fountain-pen ink came in--and a rust-hued wall-walk between the redoubt and the outer wall." From Wizard and Glass by Stephen King.
• revenant: One who returns; especially, one who returns after a long period of absence or after death; a ghost; a specter; specifically, in mod. spiritualism, an apparition; a materialization. "It slumped in the hot light, a ramshackle slate-roofed revenant growing out of a hummocky trash-littered yard, somehow making Jake think of a dangerous dog which pretended to be asleep." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• ribald: Characterized by or indulging in vulgar, lewd humor. "Here among the stone passages were all the symptoms of ribald excitement." From Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake.
• rissole: A small, pastry-enclosed croquette of a minced meat or fish, usually fried in deep fat. "The sawdust that was spread neatly over the floor each morning was by now kicked into heaps and soaked by the splashings of wine. And where, scattered about the floor, little blobs of fat had been rolled or trodden in, the sawdust stuck to them giving them the appearance of rissoles." From Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake.
• rowel: A sharp-toothed wheel inserted into the end of the shank of a spur. "The only item of interest was in the bottom drawer: a pair of spurs. One still had its star rowel, but the other had been broken off." From Wizard and Glass by Stephen King.
• rubicund: reddish; ruddy. "They went inside: down wooden steps to a cellar where rubicund barristers drank side by side with pallid money market fund managers." From Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
• scurrilous: grossly or obscenely abusive. "The reporter, Torsson, had cobbled together a scurrilous piece." From The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.
• scupper: to overwhelm; surprise and destroy, disable, or massacre. "We're going to scupper Wennerstrom." From The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.
• saveloy: a highly seasoned, dried sausage. "The drizzle stopped, so he sat on a bench in a churchyard and read his newspaper and ate his saveloy and chips." From Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman.
• sotto voce: In soft tones, so as not to be overheard; in an undertone. "'Everybody's a goddam critic,' Susannah said sotto voce." From Wizard and Glass by Stephen King.
• soupçon: A very small amount; a hint; a trace. "'Well,' she said, settleing herself, 'the correct dialect adds a soupçon of flavor, but you've got the essence, honey, yes.'" From Wizard and Glass by Stephen King.
• spavined: Marked by damage, deterioration, or ruin. "Your eyes will widen with amazement as I cut Aaron Deepneau's spavined old Kiev Defense to ribbons." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• specious: Having the ring of truth or plausibility but actually fallacious. "As he took yet another deep breath of that speciously sweet cinnamon smell, it seemed to him that he had never wanted anything so badly in his whole life." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• susurrus: a soft murmuring or rustling sound; whisper. "'The compact?' and a dozen voices as ghastly again whispered 'The compact,' in a susurrus of unearthly sound." From Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire by Neil Gaiman
• sycophant: a self-seeking, servile flatterer; fawning parasite. "But the questions were anything by sycophantic." From The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.
• tachometer: any of various instruments for measuring or indicating velocity or speed, as of a machine, a river, or the blood. "He looked back like a nocturnal rabbit trying to outstare the headlights of a sixteen-wheeled artic whose driver is a twelve-hour caffeine freak outrunning the tachometers of hell." From Mort by Terry Prachett
• tenebrous: dark; gloomy; obscure. "And, he saw, it was not a cloud or a tumor but a shape, some tenebrous, cyclopean shape racing toward the place where he stood." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• thew: A well-developed sinew or muscle; A bondman; a slave. "Dripping swords, mighty thews, and Conan the Barbarian hacking his way through the Stygian hordes." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• truculently: fierce; cruel; savagely brutal; aggressively hostile. "She looked at him truculently, and both men could see Detta Walker dancing a dangerous hornpipe in her eyes again." From The Wastelands by Stephen King.
• tumescent: swelling, slightly tumid; exhibiting or affected with many ideas or emotions; teeming; pompous and pretentious, esp. in the use of language; bombastic. Came across this in one of John Kelly's articles in the Washington Post: "The moment when I open a new vacuum-packed bag of coffee beans, and it is instantaneously transformed from a tumescent foil brick to a limp bag."
• turgid: Swollen or distended, as from a fluid; bloated: a turgid bladder; turgid veins. "The air between them was turgid with contempt and jealousy." From Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake.
• ululate: to howl as a dog or wolf; hoot, as an owl; to lament loudly and shrilly. From one of John Kelly's articles in the Washington Post: "A dog that ululates in its sleep."
• vertiginous: whirling, spinning, rotary; affected with vertigo. "He landed in a litter of old nests, caught his balance, and stared down at the vertiginous view of a Disc dawn." From The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett
• vitriolic: very caustic; scathing. "For me, it's also important that you absolutely understand that I have nothing whatsoever to do with this vitriolic attack." From The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.
• vociferous: noisy, clamorous. "...it was quite possible that Rosie would not have attached herself to Fat Charlie with such enthusiasm if, following the meeting of her mother and Fat Charlie, her mother had not expressed her opinion quite so vociferously." From Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman.
• wot: To know. "AND THE FAIR-DAY GOOSE IS ALMOST MINE, I WOT." From Wizard and Glass by Stephen King.

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