wondrous words

I\’m doing my wondrous words a day late. They all came from West with the Night, a book full of unfamiliar words, many (not listed here) which I could not find meanings for and only guessed at.

Muram– \”I peer ahead along the narrow muram runway.\”
Definition: a type of heavy, red clay soil used to pave roads

Posho– \”… the cedar forest that bounded our posho mill and paddocks.\”
Definition: a staple food in Africa made from ground maize and water

Syce– \”… she could be handled even by the syces.\”
Definition: a groom or stableman (word origins in India)

Manyatta– \”I could only wonder if he had been hurt and taken into a manyatta by some of the Masai Murani…\”
Definition: a Masai community made up of several huts enclosed by a fence

Magneto– \”Woody and I were preparing to take off for Nairobi and a doctor- and a new magneto, if one could be had.\”
Definition: a device that produces alternating current for distribution to the spark plugs, used in the ignition systems of some internal-combustion engines

Kiboko– \”… Bwana Elkington, who is saying a great many words I do not know and is carrying a long kiboko which he holds in his hand and is meant for beating the large lion.\”
Definition: a heavy leather whip

Profligate– \”He was profligate with money- his own and what he could borrow; but he spent nothing on himself and was scrupulously honest.\”
Definition: recklessly wasteful

Reimpie– \”It began with the stirring of Buller alseep, as always, at the foot of my reimpie bed in the mud and daub hut we shared together…\”
Definition: having a seat (or in this case a platform) of woven rawhide thongs

Donga– \”The lion that stood in the donga was not intimidated by Arab Maina\’s stare.\”
Definition: a dry gully

Lucerne– \”She nibbles at a single leaf of lucerne, too small to be tasted, then shambles on sluggish feet across the box.\”
Definition: alfalfa (in Britian and Australia)

Enure– \”It is an ancient lamp…. It is crumpled and slatternly, enured to failure, as if no man with hope in his fingers had ever trimmed its wick.\”
Definition: inure; to habituate oneself to something unpleasant

Nonage– \”… he will walk behind me now, when once, in the simplicity of our nonage, we walked together.\”
Definition: a period of immaturity

Strabismus– \”Please report to the examiners within three months and, if you have not contracted strabismus, or a melancholy point of view in regard to this Board, we will be happy to renew your permit.\”
Definition: a condition where the eyes are not aligned with each other

Sansevieria– \”Land on sansevieria and your plane is skewered like a duck pinned for taxidermy- land in it and walk away.\”
Definition: a type of shrubby, succulent perennial plant native to the Old World

Nostrum– \”…. each beckoning with such enthusiasm that I concluded the gin, rather than the quinine, was the nostrum immediately required.\”
Definition: \”patented\” medicine with secret ingredients (usually a quack remedy)

Snickersnee– \”The only difference is that the steer has neither the ability nor the chance to outwit the gentleman who wields the slaughterhouse snickersnee…\”
Definition: a large knife (slang, of Dutch origin)

Virescent– \”I think we were simply depressed beyond words with the business of hanging for so long a time under such a flat blue sky and above such a flat virescent swamp.\”
Definition: becoming green

Lachrymose– \”They are silent, limp or lachrymose, and in their midst sits Blix the Unsinkable- a monument of miserable sobriety, bleak as a lonely rock jutting from a lonely sea.\”
Definition: being tearful, or causing one to weep

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