Word - 120

PARRY \PAIR-ee\ verb

1 : to ward off a weapon or blow

*2 : to evade especially by an adroit answer

Example sentence:
The senator effectively parried all Beverly's questions about his dubious financial affairs.

Did you know?
"Parry" (which is used in fencing, among other applications) probably comes from "parez," a form of the French verb "parer," meaning "to guard or ward off." Its history can be compared with that of two other English words: "parapet" and "parasol." Those two terms go back to an Italian word ("parare") that means "to shield or guard." (A parapet shields soldiers and a parasol wards off the sun.) All three -- "parry," "parapet," and "parasol" -- can ultimately be traced to the Latin "parare," meaning "to prepare." And they're not alone. Other descendants of the Latin term include "apparatus," "disparate," "emperor," and even "prepare."

Word - 119

CHIROPTERAN \kye-RAHP-tuh-run\ noun

: any of an order of night-flying mammals with forelimbs modified to form wings
: bat

Example sentence:
The vampire hunters were greeted by swarms of chiropterans as they entered Dracula's castle.

Did you know?

"Chiroptera" is the name of the order of the only mammal capable of true flight, the bat. The name is influenced by the hand-like wings of bats, which are formed from four elongated "fingers" covered by a cutaneous membrane. It is based on the Greek words for "hand," "cheir," and "wing," "pteron." "Cheir" also had a hand in the formation of the word "surgery," which is ultimately derived from the ancient word "cheirourgos," meaning "doing by hand." "Pteron" is widely used in technical names of flying insects. It's also the ancestor of a well-known, common word: "helicopter," which joins "pteron" with Greek "heliko," meaning "spiral."

Word - 118

SUPERFICIES \soo-per-FISH-eez\ noun

1 : a surface of a body or a region of space

*2 : the external aspects or appearance of a thing

Example sentence:

Although there have been changes in the superficies of our lives, many of the human dilemmas faced by our ancestors are still quite recognizable.

Did you know?

Look below the surface of "superficies" and "surface" and you'll find the very same Latin roots: "super-," meaning "on top," and "facies," meaning "face" or "aspect." English speakers plucked "superficies" right from Latin -- it means "surface" in that language. Our word "surface" came to us by way of Middle French, where "sur-" (which comes from "super" and also means "on top") was combined with "face" (meaning "face"; from "facies"). We added "surface" to our crop of borrowed words around 1600, and the first known use of “superficies” is from 1530. One tricky thing to keep in mind about "superficies" is that it can be singular (even though it ends in an "s"!) or plural. There is no "superficie" or "superficy."

Word - 117

ELDRITCH \EL-dritch\ adjective

: weird, eerie

Example sentence:
Christina accompanied her ghost story by playing a recording filled with creaks, howls, and other eldritch sound effects.

Did you know?

"Curse," "cobweb," "witch," "ghost," and even "Halloween" -- all of these potentially spooky words have roots in Old English. "Eldritch," also, comes from a time when otherworldly beings were commonly thought to inhabit the earth. The word is about 500 years old and believed to have come from Middle English "elfriche," meaning "fairyland." The two components of "elfriche" -- "elf" and "riche" -- come from the Old English "aelf" and "rice" (words which meant, literally, "elf kingdom"). Robert Louis Stevenson wasn't scared of "eldritch." He used the term in his novel Kidnapped: "'The curse on him and his house, byre and stable, man, guest, and master, wife, miss, or bairn -- black, black be their fall!' --The woman, whose voice had risen to a kind of eldritch sing-song, turned with a skip, and was gone."

Word - 116

MANTICORE \MAN-tih-kor\ noun

: a legendary animal with the head of a man, the body of a lion, and the tail of a dragon or scorpion

Example sentence:
The book, a collection of fantastic tales, has on its cover a vivid illustration of a wild-eyed manticore chasing a hunter.

Did you know?

A mythical creature of ancient fables, the manticore keeps company with the better-known unicorn, dragon, and griffin. Descriptions of the manticore's features sometimes differ (some accounts mention porcupine quills or poisonous spikes, for example; others depict the tail as having a serpent's head), but the animal is by all accounts a dreadful beast. The word "manticore" came to English through Greek and Latin, and is probably ultimately of Iranian origin. Etymologists think it is related to an Old Persian word for "man-eater."