cult
A tight-knot, relatively cloistered association of like-minded individuals practicing religious beliefs or principles of behavior deemed by outsiders as potentially dangerous to members or others.
calcifying
Hardening, strengthening or reinforcing.
innocuous
Something or someone deemed safe and harmless due to an overriding characteristic of being ordinary and commonplace.
twitchy
Nervous and anxious to the point of becoming physically jittery.
Polaroids
Photographs that are immediately developed and printed inside the camera after the image has been captured before being ejected for instant viewing.
banalities
Cliches and trite expressions.
penitent
A person seeking redemption and atonement for previous sins.
psychedelia
Characterizing a sub-culture that reached its height of penetration in the late 1960s and relates to hallucinogenics drugs and its impact on music, literature, film and other aspects of pop culture.
devotee
A zealous and fanatical follower.
solstice
The two days of each years when the sun reaches its highest or lowest point in the sky, thus making those days the ones with the shortest and longest amount of daylight of the year.
compulsion
An impulsive urge often too irresistible to reject, control or deny.
register
The range of the human voice's capacity to reveal emotion through the pitch of a word rather than the meaning of the word itself.
rarefied
A social status and lifestyle elevated from ordinary experience with the implicit promise of being more exciting and fulfilling.
disingenuous
A form of deceit intent on softening the harshness of a lie by the adoption of a pretense that something is not really everything that it clearly appears to be.
quivering
A wobbling or vibrating resulting from an unsteady or unstable situation.
cryptic
Deliberately obscure and unclear, usually with an undertone of the mysterious.
genteel
Well-mannered, polite, discreet, polished and conservative, but with an underlying potential for snobbery and condescension.
presentiment
The strange sensation of having some sort of obscure awareness that something bad is soon going to happen.
Cadge
To get something or ask for something that one is not strictly entitled to
Solder
Something that unites, like an alloy used to join two metals
Hoary
Old; can also refer to a grayish-white coloring
Stupor
A state of insensibility, or lacking mental clarity
Yoke
A harness that is fastened to a pair of animals (often oxen)
Corral
Gather or herd together a group of people or things
Mundane
Boring and monotonous
Naive
Showing a lack of experience or innocence
Scrum
A Rugby term describing an ordered formation of players
Middy blouse
A collared blouse worn by women and/or children resembling a sailor’s blouse
