Vocabulary Study: Nouns

• antimacassars | Her gift for words and the cultural predicament of her time drove her to poetry instead of antimacassars ... [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Dickinson]

• sultan | there are lots of sultans in Arabian Nights. In general, the leaders of different cultures throughout times have different names. There are: king, czar, emperor, sultan, chairman, president, chieftain...

• nostrum | There are even over-the-counter memory nostrums available in health-food stores.

• pillory | we already have too much people publicly pilloried these days ... [a simile on celebrities' private lives being pursuit by media.] | Take a group of passionate, obsessive, suspicious and Web-inclined individuals (both journalists and Mac lovers qualify). Tell them that there is a secret deal between two organizations about which they are passionate and obsessive. They will then stay up all night speculating about who sold his soul to whom, and will exhaust their vocabularies pillorying the apparent soul- sellers. [N.Y. Times. 2002-01-14. A Cover for Steve Jobs, a Faux Pas for Time, By FELICITY BARRINGE]

• Golgotha | Lecter draws “Golgotha After the Deposition” and Starling's inquiry leads into a running religious discussion. [analysis on the film Silence of the Lambs, 1991]

• Duomo | That's the Palazzo Vecchio and the Duomo, seen from the Belvedere. [dialogue in movie Silence of the Lambs, 1991. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duomo and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palazzo_Vecchio ]

• spindles | the thing that winds threads. compare to ratchet.

• foyer, flue | In the film The Haunting (1999), the beautiful “Hills House” has an octagonal foyer, and a flue in the walk-in sized fire place.

• mandible | as in, the mandible of a longhorn beetle. (gratis link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandible )

• manor | rich folks has manors, estates, mansions.

• maul | If you are a fan of Star Wars movie, you must have heard of Darth Maul. Darth Maul is a Sith lord apprentice, who wields an double-sided light saber — the bane of Jedi Knights. The name isn't picked randomly, of course. Darth imparts dark or death, and maul means heavy hammer or injury by such hammer.

• insignia | warlords in uniform has lots of insignias, assholes of infinite order, Purple Hearts and all that shit. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insignia]

• leaven

• lemming | the rodent known for mass migration sometimes resulted mass drowning, misunderstood as mass suicide. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming )

• libretto | music lingo, the text of an opera

• ligature | in typography, it's those connected letters, such as: fi=fi, ae=æ. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligature_(typography)

• limelight

• paean

• pagan

• vegan

• treadle

• trestle

• trice

• troubadour

• trousseau

• trowel

• tundra

• venison

• ventricle

• vesicle

• vestry

• vinyl

• vole

• wayfarer

• winch

• jersey | a fabric

• nodule | e.g. clitoris is a nodule of the flesh

• legume

• jowl

• napalm

• whirligig

• yammer

• yeoman

• varicose | invariably: varicose veins. This word appeared in the dialogue in the movie Sex, Lies, and Videotape, where one sister is buying their mother a sundress, and the other retorted why she want one because she's got varicose veins all over.

• pestilence | If anyone have shit to say, say it with splendor. It is better to have ingenious pests in this forum than inflamed superheroes babbling about pestilence. [Xah Lee, 2000-03, chiding unconcious hypocritical netiquette moralists of news groups in comp.lang.lisp]

• rump | buttocks

• shogun

• shuck

• seraph | a type of angle

• lackey | lackey is not a common word today, but i it appeared in children's story such as Cinderella. A lackey is a liveried male servant. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella .

• fleck

• armada | At some point, the armada of [high tech] devices we strap to our bodies like tools on Batman's belt will coalesce into a smaller number of multifunction devices.

• sapling | as with yearling, youngling, we have sapling, usually of one year old.

• sapwood | we have sapwood and heartwood. Sapwood is on the outside, heartwood is inside.

• scripture | “Holy shit, the president is reading the Holy Scripture”

• semaphore | flags or lights used to signal by arm movement, is in airplane take off, railroad, or military

• dilettante

• booty

• psalm | god-awful songs

• ocher

• parakeet | parrot of a kind

• monograph

• regalia | the general came in in full regalia

• remittance | buying an iMac now will get you a $10 remittance

• resin | kind of clear film plastered onto plastics

• litmus

• livery

• longitude

• dewberry

• magnum

• mahout | keeper & driver of an elephant

• harness

• mangrove

• hedge

• ratchet | ... the crime problem has ratcheted up a few notches.

• loft | ... we'll go to my loft ... [dialogue from movie The Haunting (1999); said by a sluttish character.]

• lei | a garland of flowers

• toga | as he rises, he wraps the sheet over his shoulder like a toga.

• promontory | It was a great big house that had a horse fence around it and sat on a little promontory.

• arabesque | Another distinct pattern type perfected in Islamic art is the arabesque. This comprises curvilinear elements resembling leafed and floral forms. In such patterns spiral forms intertwine, undulate, and coalesce continuously.

• Pharaoh | In the land of the Pharaoh, you did what you were told, whether in erecting a colossal temple or in solving a math problem. [describing ancient Egypt]

• commode | ...The Animal Hour which features a woman's head being severed and stuffed into a commode.

• quatrain | Your aid I want, nine trees to plant. In rows just half a score; And let there be in each row three. Solve this: I ask no more. —Rational Amusement for Winter Evenings, London, 1821. John Jackson

• sarcophagus | The marble sarcophagus in which the body of General Washington now rests was a gift from a Philedelphia stonemason in 1837.

• vignette | A series of autobiographical vignettes.

• finch | a class of bird, including sparrow, cardinal, canary and others.

• gangplank | Louis Lumiére had photographed the members of the Photographic Congress disembarking from a gangplank at Neuville-Sur-Saone.

• parasol

• coriander | an aromatic annual Eurasian herb in the parsley family. Also called Chinese parsley, cilantro. I love the smell of it. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriander

• pumice stone

• dredging | For the past month, divers have been clearing away 3 ft. of sediment from on top of the 40-ft.-long sub and dredging an excavation trench around it. ... [Time Mag. 2000-06-19. p. 58, "Raising the Hunley"]

• thistle

• pew | the row of benchs in church

• catamaran | “You know I really like to sail on those catamarans.”

• origami

• orchard

• parchment

• orangutan

• prong | 3 pronged fork

• plumb

• sedge | don't we have a cartoon character call Sonic the Sedge Hog? (or was it Hedgehog) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedge)

• scullery

• scull | nautical: boat jargon: oar like row

• sash | ribbon like worn over waist or shoulder, like worn by beauty pageant contestants or StarTrek's Wulf

• sarsaparilla | root bears are made of

• barge | Once recovered, the sub will be barged upriver to a conservation facility, ... [Time Mag. 2000-06-19. p. 58, “Raising the Hunley”]

• omnibus

• hobbyhorse

• planetoid

• aerie

• aerosol

• allergen

• ballast

• boondocks

• chassis

• chiffonier

• dowel

• emcee

• friar

• geisha

• gaggle

• granola

• lentil

• limbo

• mace

• midget

• obelisk

• pantheon

• placard

• screwball

• trammel | a device that draw ellipse. Often called Trammel of Archimedes.

• trough

• tarpaulin

• goulash

• butte

• lectern

• cartouche

• evisceration

• posy

• solon

• cowl

• trawl

• marsupial

• bard

• coelenterate

• ebonite

• ecdysiast

• fiord

• fresco

• knickers

• laudanum

• lied

• plowshare

• sheikh

• buggy

• artisan

• badger

• crypt

• grotto

• hostelry

• sluice

• vane

• decathlon

• ecru

• fuselage

• tumbril

• wheal | canning leaves wheals

• winch