Embrasure: An opening in a fortification wall for defender to shoot a gun or a bow. The opening is usually bigger on the inside to allow the defender the wide arc of attack while limiting the opportunities for incoming threats.Walking to the embrasure was like walking through the voice. I looked quickly out: there was nothing to be seen.
Planchette: Before I reveal the surprising meaning for planchette, let's consider its two etymological relatives: plank (as in: walk the ...) and planchet. A planchet is a blank for minting coins. A planchette is the piece of wood on rollers as used by an Ouija Board and other similar devices to foretell the future. On a related etymolgical note: Ouija is a composite of oui (French for yes) and ja (German for yes).Caodaism ... was a synthesis of the three religions. The Holy See was at Tanyin. A pope and female cardinals. Prophecy by planchette.
In any vision somewhere you could find the planchette.
They let me through as far as Nam Dinh to see our trachoma team, and then I hired a boat.
Luck was with him and he got back to Hanoi with his trachoma team.
... though hanging on the walls of what had been the living room were two hideous oleographs of the Sacred Heart and the Mother and Child which gave the whole ramshackle group of buildings a European air.
These two guns share their etymology, as both names are acronyms, and the EN part of the acronym refers to the British arm manufacturing facility in Enfield. Both guns went into volume manufacturing during World War II, but their life extended well beyond.... two solider with camouflaged helmets going slowly away up the edge of the street, their sten guns at the ready.
One had a sten gun and one a rifle, but they were as scared as I'd been.
We wouldn't have stood a chance if, at the moment we set off, a bren had not begun to fire in quick short bursts somewhere down the road towards the next tower.
I saw that his soutane was speckled with blood.
He wore a long white soutane and he chain-smoked.
Even the priest who sat in a corner of the tower never changed his position as he read in his breviary.
He made a noisy show of pulling out chairs and calling for the waiter, though all that activity could possibly produce at the Continental was a choice of beer, brandy and soda or vermouth cassis.
Kepi: Kepi shares its etymology with cap. Specifically, a kepi is a French military hat.I turned at the High Commissioner's house, where the Foreign Legion stood on guard in their white kepis and scarlet epaulettes.
Before sending him to the sky, I stared at him, trying to hold his features, including his sardonic grin, in my mind.
Punty: A punty is a metal or wooden pole used to shape blown glass. The glass blower puts a blob of molten glass at the end of a hollow blow pipe and creates a bubble. With the aid of various different punties the glass may be shaped into something as simple (geometrically) as a bowl or vase or as complex as animals and flowers.It was another four seasons before we would let Tula handle a punty iron again.
Stocks rose 1 percent on Tuesday after industrial bellwether United Technologies Corp posted results that beat expectation. (Reuters)
A shepherd always needs a bellwether - or he himself must occasionally be a wether.
Alison had written the ceremony, making her own palimpsest out of the Book of Common Prayer and her poetic inclinations ... the whole thing as relentlessly conventional as the wedding dresses.
Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd. Grangemouth, Stirlingshire, Scotland.
Moue: A moue is a pout or a grimace. Moue comes directly from French and shares its etymology with nothing, nada, rien.Chelsea made a dismissive moue and flicked her fingers.
Selkie, Selky: A selkie is a mythical creature which is a mixture of human and seal. Selkies seem to be predominantly female and closely related to mermaids. In the incestuous logic of fantasy, selkies are the explanation for the myth of mermaids, as if selkies are more real than mermaids.He'd thought there were none of her people left, the selkies whose attempt at saving themselves had driven them out of the sight and minds of the other remaining Old Races.
None of the other races seemed to have that connotation, though she had no idea what a selkie was.
She was tall and plump, with kohl-rimmed eyes, her hair dyed an unnatural black.
She had the same delicate features as the Commander, yet the long hair and the thin lines of kohl around her eyes transformed his face into her ageless beauty.
Ruching: Ruching is gathered material used as decoration. It comes from the French word for beehive and the Latin word for bark. It is the haute couture analogue to rucking (today's other word).Emma's dress today was a favorite of hers - a floral jersey dress with a flared A-line skirt and ruching at the waist. The only reason Emma knew it was called ruching was because her fashionista sister Leena had told her before approving of her wardrobe choice.
Ruck: Ruck, in relation to clothing, describes where the material is scrunched together, either temporarily or permanently. It might even be used to describe pleats. The etymology, as with many fashion metaphorical terms is extended and interesting. Ruck shares its Norse etymology with rick, as used in hayrick, and possibly rick-rack. A ruck or a rick is a pile of stuff, and by analogy, can refer to the masses, the ordinary, much like the hoi polloi (literally: the many). Ruck is used in Rugby to describe a pile-up of players. Thus, ruck is one of those words with a very general root meaning (pile) that has been applied to many different situations. However, this etymology is not shared with rucksack, though it seems applicable. Rucksack has a different etymology (German) and literally means backpack.His hands slid to her hips, rucking up the hem of her top, to settle against her suede skirt.
As any parent of a teenager child will tell you, the essential contrariness of adolescents suggests that the more adults inveigh against smoking and lecture teenagers about its dangers, the more teens, paradoxically, will want to try it.
Andouille: Andouille is a Cajun sausage. Andouille is a French word for sausage and shares its etymology with induct and induce (into a sausage casing).So it will be gumbo again this evening, duck and andouille.
Are they extricable entrities? Can an Adam's apple moving under his skin be removed and held in the hand like a marble?
It must be taken into the bargain if all sorts of clouds and disturbances - in brief, little attacks of hebetation - pass over the spirit of a people that is suffering, and wants to suffer, of nationalistic nerve fever and political ambition.
Her porch is quite obscured, tastefully, be variegated ginger.
Tufts of shrubbery made a variegated border along the curving line of the graveled drive.
Is there anyone who has never been mortally sick of everything subjective and of his ipsissimosity?
I would run errands for ship chandlers, or sit by a wall somewhere and read The Pirate's Daughter.
We're completely self-sufficient with regard to power and everything else aboard except for chandlerage and supplies.
What is much more essential is that the exoteric approach sees things from below, the esoteric looks down from above.
Felucca: A felucca is a sail boat where the sail are supported by diagonal yard arms. On most modern sailboats, the sails are supported by masts and lines. The Mayflower-life square riggers used horizontal yard arms. The felucca is an ancient design that dates back to the Romans, and the name is latinate, sharing its etymology with triangle for the shape of the sails. Feluccas are small and maneuverable, but have been been pushed aside by motor boats. Today they mostly survive as tourist boats on the Nile. However, in the latter part of the 19th century they were the workhorse of the San Francisco fishing fleet.San Francisco we lived in Mrs Liberty's flash-house ... looking down towards the packed wharves. There were coal carriers and fruit schooners, feluccas and Chinese crates, there was the New York liner and freight steamers from Sydney.
It is the German form of skepticism which ... brought Europe for a long time under the hegemony of the German spirit and its critical and historical mistrust.
Still, he could be found late into the night at his work table, huddled over the papyrus scroll and writing Greek and Hebrew characters by the flickering light of a half-dozen guttering candles.
The general welfare is no ideal, no goal, no remotely intelligible concept, but only an emetic - that what is fair for one cannot be any means for that reason alone also be fair for others.
The casket bearing Anne's remains was moved to the catafalque beside the grave.
It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that physics, too, is only an interpretation and exegesis of the world (to suit us, if I [Friedrich Nietzche] may say so!) and not a world-explanation.
As I [Robert Sullivan] was trying to show in my exegesis on the sandbank passage in Walden, Thoreau was inspired as much by man's interaction with nature as he was by what we might call pure nature.
Oriel Window: An oriel window is a bay window.There was still some light filtering through the oriel windows, but it was dark enough that Tobias had the cook lower the large chandelier from the crossbeam in the vaulted ceiling so the candles could be lit.
One had authenticated the ossuary of James, the brother of Jesus, only to see his reputation tarnished when it was unmasked as a fake.
Whether his little machine is placed at this or that spot in science, and whether the "promising" young worker turns himself into a good philologist or an expert on fungi or a chemist: it does not characterize him that he becomes this or that. In the philosopher, conversely, there is nothing that is impersonal.
He contacted the Columbia philologist he had met at the party, who in turn put him in touch with a couple of medievalists.
Pallium: A pallium is a narrow, white scarf worn by high Roman Catholic officials, embroidered with crosses. Over the centuries the pallium has evolved as to who might wear it and when. Today the modern pallium is only worn by the Pope and select archbishops. The Pope's pallium is a circle worn around the neck with pieces hang down in front and back.Phillip reached into a small pocket in the tail of his pallium and removed the letter, tied with ribbon and sealed with wax.
He was well dressed in wool trousers and a silk shirt, over which he wore a pallium, a narrow scarf of lamb's wool emblazoned with crosses that was draped over his shoulders and hung to his hips in the front and back.
Kobold: A kobold is the German version of a goblin, sprite, leprechaun, fairy - a benign spirit that plays tricks and disappears. In the German folklore, their are house kobolds, miner kobolds, and sailor kobolds. The house kobold is like the house elf in Harry Potter. The kobolds in World of Warcraft is usually of the miner caste and more sinister than the traditional kobold.But anyone who considers the basic drives of man to see to what extent they may have been at play just here as inspiring spirits (or daemons or kobolds) will find that all of them have done philosophy at some time - and that every single one of them would like only too well to represent just itself as the ultimate purpose of existence and the legitimate master of all other drives.
...comfortable easy chairs grouped around the fireplace with antimacassars tatted by Mrs. Monaghan's grandmother...
The equally stiff and decorous Tartuffery [hypocrisy] of the old Kant as he lures us on the dialectical bypaths that lead to his "categorical imperative" - really lead astray and seduce - this spectacle makes us smile, as we are fastidious and find it quite amusing to watch closely the subtle tricks of old moralists and preachers of moral.
The Calder public relations representative - that odd, epicene individual from his interview with Georgie Pickles - appeared discreetly at his side.
