I suppose you know them, as you're all much smarter than I am.
1. sententiously
2. pullulation
3. deturgescence
4. plangently
1. sententiously: terse or full of meaning.
2. pullulation: to germinate or bud. (In this context the word referred to a crowd at a train station, so the meaning is closer to the original Latin root meaning "to shoot out.")
3. deturgescence: biology-online.com defines it as: "the mechanism by which the stroma of the cornea remains relatively dehydrated." This has absolutely nothing to do with the content of the paragraph. The word is not found at AskOxford.com, TheFreeDictionary.com, or in my unabridged Webster's 20th Century. The word detumescence, however, is in the dictionary, and the meaning does fit the useage in the text. Had this been a difference of only one letter, I could have seen it as a typographical error. After all, the same text earlier says "plant" when the obvious word is "planet." In this case, however, the difference is of two letters, so my hasty but decisive conclusion is that the author is a pretentious twit who doesn't know as much as he wants us to think he knows. Oh, and, detumescence: diminuation of swelling [Rare].
4. plangently: a noisy dashing or beating [Rare].
Seventy-five pages I got through without running across arcane words. Then, in half a dozen pages, I hit four in quick succession. I'm sure there will be more. I'll keep you posted.
In the meantime, anybody care to hazard a guess as to the title or author?
