Glossary of Terms
abstruse: hard to understand
ague: a chill or similar brief illness
B-Girl: A woman hired by a bar to persuade customers to spend money freely
bantam: small yet aggressive
bedraggled: dilapidated
brackish: distasteful; unpalatable
caparisoned: dressed in rich clothing
chanteuse: a woman singer
charlatan: a quack or fraud
chartreuse: a greenish-yellow color
coxcomb: a dandy
cretin: an idiot
culottes: a woman's full trousers cut to resemble a skirt
desultorily: haphazardly
distaff: referring to a woman (from a time when women spun clothes using a spinning tool called a distaff)
doldrums: a melancholy time
doxy: promiscuous woman
effrontery: presumptuousness
elephantine: enormous
enervated: out of energy
ennui: boredom
epicene: effeminate or unmanly
ersatz: a lesser imitation or substitute
fecund: fruitful
foppery: foolish quality of a dandy or coxcomb
gaucheries: awkward acts
gimlet: sharp or penetrating
harangue: long, overdone speech (noun); to speak a harangue (verb)
hennaed: dyed reddish-brown
hirsute: covered with hair
imprecation: curse
jade: disreputable woman
jodhpurs: riding pants
Lilliput: a land filled with tiny people, from Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels
loquacious: talkative
Luftwaffe: the German air force around World War II
lugubrious: mournful in almost a funny way
lute: a stringed instrument
mensch: admirable man having, for example, fortitude, firmness, and good manners
muffler: a heavy scarf
muscatel: a kind of wine
nosegay: a small set of flowers
novena: a nine-day series of prayers and devotions
octogenarian: aged in one's eighties
offal: the unused parts after an animal is butchered
onanist: one who masturbates
parasol: an umbrella used against the sun
patina: a change in appearance produced by frequent application
pekoe: black tea
perambulate: to walk around
pique: wounded pride
Proustian: following Marcel Proust, a French writer
pyloric valve: a muscle at the bottom of the stomach
recherche: exquisite
rheumy: moist or arthritic
roue: a man who is lecherous and dissipated
roughage: fiber
scrofulous: looking or being externally diseased
septuagenarians: people in their seventies
sibyl: a female prophet
sodality: association
stentorian: very loud (after Stentor, the storied Greek herald)
supercilious: haughty
surfeited: overfull
svengali: one who evilly schemes to persuade another to do something
tarsi: foot bones
valise: a piece of hand luggage
vibrissae: stiff hairs projecting from the snout or brow of many animals
W.C.T.U.: Woman's Christian Temperance Union
W.P.A.: Works Progress Administration or Work Projects Administration, a New Deal agency
wan: unnaturally pale, as from stress
Weltanschauung: worldview
Xanadu: an idyllic place (originally Kublai Khan's majestic summer capital)
ClassicNote on A Confederacy of Dunces
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