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bbclesmis · 6 years

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King Of The Castle: At Home With Dominic West

As the star of HBO's The Wire and The Affair, Dominic West made his name playing conflicted Americans battling their demons and struggling to find their places in the world. And cheating on their women. In real life, he's a self-deprecating father of four from outside Sheffield, and among his chief preoccupations is how to preserve the 800-year-old Irish castle inherited by his wife.

"Excuse me," says Dominic West, "I’m just going to wipe this so you can sit down and you won’t be infected with disease." About seven crumbs on his otherwise clean kitchen table disappear with the swipe of a tea towel, and he gets back to the business of making lunch. We’re in the kitchen of his house in Wiltshire, where he lives with his wife Catherine and their four children.

His head turns from cupboard to cupboard, like he’s watching a tennis match. “Where has the rice gone? Would you like rice?”

Yes please, if that’s what you’re having.

“I am, if I can fucking find it.”

He fucking finds it and a pan of rice goes on the hob next to the pan of leftover beef stew. “So I’m on the cover?” he says, looking out of the window. “But doesn’t that mean you’ve got to try and make it interesting?”

In 2000, Dominic West joined an Argentinian circus. This was the year before he auditioned for and won his breakthrough role of Detective Jimmy McNulty on The Wire and the year after he had a single line (“The boy’s here to see Padmé”) as a guard of one of those science-fiction sliding doors in Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace. He was 30, five years out of drama school and father to a one-year-old daughter.

The circus, De La Guarda, had a show, also called De La Guarda, at the Roundhouse in Camden. It was the hottest ticket in London that year. The audience entered the round to ambient music under a low paper ceiling. Performers would burst through the paper, on ropes, and eventually a pounding live soundtrack accompanied a dozen or more roped performers as they ran around the walls of the circular venue. Water rained down. Some audience members would be lifted into the air; others, perhaps more fortunate, would be pressed into urgent dancing with attractive, adrenalised Argentinians unclipped from their shackles. Or indeed, West himself.

‘What’s amazing,’ says Keira Knightley, ‘is that Dominic can play characters who should be total dickheads, yet he manages to give them a point of view and his own incredible charm. It is a great skill’

“Why did I do it?” says West, somewhat incredulously. “You saw it! Wouldn’t you want to run away and join that circus? It was such a sexy show. I saw it in London and New York, then heard they were auditioning in London and I had to do it. I did a lot of shows in five months with those amazing men and women, then they went to Vegas. It was a disaster there. The water. People dressed up for a Vegas show — of course they didn’t want to get wet.”

West didn’t want to go to Vegas. But he would end up spending a lot more time in America, filming five seasons of The Wire and four seasons of The Affair, with a fifth and final one due to start filming a couple of days after we make lunch.

“The toughest part of making these big episodic American television shows is missing my family and the boredom,” he says, gearing himself up for the process to begin again. “Sitting around waiting and not being bored is hard. There was a time when I had a play in the West End [Butley, 2011] and was learning Iago [for Othello] and I had more on than usual. That was hard work, but the harder that aspect of the work gets, the more enjoyable it is. Actual graft is what’s great about acting. That’s something I relish, because most of the time, it’s about coping with tedium.”

To stop himself being bored on set, West likes to have fun. “You can’t not have fun with him,” says Keira Knightley, soon to be seen alongside West in the film Colette. “I think fun is something that Dominic brings to everything. He very much likes a night out, is always up for a laugh and is, in the best way, wicked. And he is a phenomenally good actor, he really is. So effortless.”

“For a lot of us,” Knightley says, “who do actually need to concentrate when we’re working, it’s, ‘How are you that good when you're chatting and joking until the very last second?’ Even I had to tell him to shut up so I could concentrate. Which I had to do quite a lot.”

West is not about to shut up. And he’s not the only one. “I just did a thing with Olivia Colman [a BBC mini-series adaptation of Les Misérables] and: fuck me! Ha ha ha! The whole thing is like playing top-level sports with her. How frivolous can you be up to ‘Action!’ and then be amazing. She doesn’t do that consciously, she is just really fucking good. She is way, way, way better than me. I had to stop listening to her because she is so funny.”

Then a more serious thought occurs. “Malcolm Gladwell’s thing about 10,000 hours [the writer’s theory, from his book Outliers, that to be expert in any field requires that exact amount of practice time]? I worked it out and I’ve had at least 20,000 hours. I’ve acted so much now I can turn it on and off, and that’s maybe where the humour thing comes in. I have had an awful lot of practice at this.”

Dominic West first got the taste for drama when he was nine years old. His mother, Moya, gave him a part in her amateur production of The Winslow Boy, at Sheffield University’s drama studio. His father, George, had a factory in Wakefield that made vandal-proof bus shelters. George’s father, Harold, a managing director of a steelworks in Barnsley, fought in WWI and was wounded at the Battle of Vimy Ridge. “After, he wrote a note to go with his medals,” says West, “that said, ‘Here are a few mementos from a deeply happy part of my life’.” West has found documentaries commemorating the centenary of the Armistice “deeply moving.”

He is the sixth of seven children, with five sisters and an elder brother. They grew up in a large house on the edge of the Peak District, about 10 miles southwest of Sheffield. He boarded at Eton and hated it to begin with. “I was very homesick, had no reference to it, didn’t know anyone who had gone and I felt I was in the wrong place.” Inspiring teachers and school plays gave him something to be excited about and set him on his path.

“It’s pretentious to say, really, but my acting education was defined by doing Hamlet at Eton, reading Ulysses when I was doing my English degree at Trinity College in Dublin, then War and Peace, which we put on at Guildhall [School of Music & Drama in London]. That’s it, really. All I learned anywhere.”

Legend has it that in the audience watching his Prince of Denmark was Damian Lewis, a couple of years behind West at school, and later the star of Band of Brothers, Homeland and Billions. So taken was the younger lad by what he saw that he decided to become an actor.

“Categorically: no,” Lewis tells me, over the phone from Los Angeles. “I had always acted at school and always enjoyed it. Me thinking it was something I could do more seriously didn’t happen until I was 16 years old, after seeing Dom do Hamlet. He was very charismatic. A big, booming sonorous voice, especially for a 17-year-old. I was very taken with him, he was very captivating up on stage.”

Since graduating from Guildhall, West has worked solidly. He is not a huge movie star but is highly successful and versatile. There aren’t many men who could convincingly play both Fred West and Richard Burton, as West has done. He won a Bafta for his Fred West. He’s most memorable as Jimmy McNulty, not least because he and The Wire are so good, but also because constant reminders of those two facts have become standard reference points in the increasingly vast conversation about the New Golden Age of TV.

He has, in his own words, played “a long line of philandering cads”, from McNulty on to Hector Madden, the Fifties news anchor in two seasons of The Hour for the BBC, to Noah in The Affair and Willy in Colette. “What’s amazing,” says Keira Knightley, “is that he can play characters that should be total dickheads, yet he manages to give them a point of view and his own incredible charm, so you sort of forgive them for how terrible they might be. It is a great skill.”

But he is far from typecast. His five film roles previous to Willy in Colette are: Lara Croft’s dad, a sort of country-gent Indiana Jones, in Tomb Raider; a quietly pompous pyjamas-wearing modern artist in the Swedish film The Square, which won the Palme D’Or at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival; Rudder, a comic-relief Cockney sea lion in Pixar’s Finding Dory; a Teflon swine of a CEO opposite George Clooney and Julia Roberts in Money Monster; and, in Genius, Ernest Hemingway.

There have been stage successes, including star turns in the West End. Following up the blockbuster and critically lauded play Jerusalem, the writer Jez Butterworth and director Ian Rickson could have done any play with anyone on any stage. They chose Dominic West to star in The River, a short, intense play with one man and two women in the 90-seater upstairs room at the Royal Court Theatre in London, for which West won universal praise.

‘It is a bad thing to be self-deprecating. It’s quite an English thing, which you become very aware of in America. People don’t understand: why do yourself down? I sort of agree with it, now’

“Dominic is able to unleash his unconscious in a really ‘present’ way,” says Ian Rickson. “It allows him to fuse into the darkness of Fred West, for example, or the troubled soul of McNulty. In terms of archetypes, he has a trickster quality hiding a warrior/lover inside. That’s exciting. There’s very little ego and a lot of generosity of spirit. He actually has a refreshingly comic sense of himself, so he does really value the opportunities he has, and doesn’t take them too seriously.”

West feels he does and he doesn’t. “I suppose deep down there’s a feeling that what I do isn’t desperately serious. It might have been Mark Boxer, the cartoonist, who said he went to some lunch for cartoonists, an awards maybe, and he was having a piss and the guy next to him said, ‘Cartoonist. It’s not a real job, is it?’ And he said, ‘No, it’s not. Isn’t that great!’ He took great comfort from that and I feel the same about acting. But there is something in me which feels, partly because I have been doing it all my life and did as a hobby before I did it professionally, that this is not a serious job for adults.”

Perhaps this is why he’s so self-deprecating. Twice during our conversations, he says that he’s not a “real actor”, bringing up Daniel Day-Lewis’s commitment to doing an accent the entire time he makes a film, on and off set, and his own inability to match that; and pointing out Robert De Niro’s weight gain for Raging Bull. For Colette, West wore a fat suit.

And yet, during our conversations, he trots out seven perfect accents and imitations: Mick Jagger, the German film director Werner Herzog, Northern Irish, Irish, Australian, New York and a deep, thespian-type voice to convey mock indignance. He’s not showing off. Some of the voices were to make anecdotes funnier and others were just as anyone might do an accent subconsciously when you think of someone with an accent. You know, for fun.

But he can be serious. “It is a bad thing, to be self-deprecating,” he says, a little bit disappointed with himself. “Maybe it’s an educational thing. It’s quite an English thing, which you become very aware of in America. People just don’t understand why on earth you would do that. There are enough people who would do you down, why do yourself down? I sort of agree with it, now. It is tiresome.”

Clarke Peters, who played Lester Freamon in The Wire, and Othello to West’s Iago on stage in 2011, has a different view of his friend’s dilemma. “As good an actor as he is, his self- deprecating comments are his truth. He would prefer to be playing than talking about himself; exploring a character, discovering nuances, dissecting a character’s arc, is where he’s comfortable. Presenting all that unseen work is nerve-wracking. And actors are never the best judges of their own work. So, to be safe from criticism and microscopic scrutiny, self-deprecation is the best defence."

The fat suit in Colette was no cop-out. “I was then about to play Jean Valjean,” West says, more forgiving of himself now, “a man who has been in prison for 19 years, so there was a clash of waistline imperatives.” He plays the lead in a song-free, six-part Les Misérables — the project in which Olivia Colman out-joked him — the BBC’s first big drama of 2019, with the opening episode broadcast on New Year’s Day.

According to Keira Knightley, the extra padding, and a walrus moustache, did not mute West’s physical attractiveness. “Nobody looks good in that,” she says, “but he somehow manages to be dangerously sexy through it. It was a main conversation between the rest of us on set: how he managed to ooze sexuality while he was farting in two fat suits. Quite extraordinary. I can’t think of another actor who might be able to do that.”

Sarah Treem, the showrunner of The Affair, could not conceive of anyone else but West as her leading man, Noah Solloway. “He didn’t audition. I wrote it with him in mind,” she says. “I was a huge fan of The Wire and I just loved how complicated he could be — both likeable and unlikeable at the same time.”

The Affair begins with Noah, a married father of four, embarking on a fling with a waitress, Alison, played by Ruth Wilson, and then follows the fall-out for the two of them, their spouses and extended families. West, Wilson and the wider cast are terrific, as is the show’s central conceit of telling the story from the point-of-view of different characters, usually two in each hour-long episode.

“Dominic is so good at playing all different facets of Noah,” Treem continues. “His intelligence, his lust, his insecurity, the pain of his childhood, his love for his children. He lets Noah be a very complicated, sometimes deeply generous, sometimes horribly selfish, man.”

West concurs, with a caveat. “I have had difficulty wondering why someone who I can identify with — he’s my age and has a bunch of kids — would do the things he does. Sarah, a very brilliant woman younger than I am, looked at me with a raised eyebrow when I said, ‘Men my age just don’t do that. Why leave your wife and kids for a waitress and start another family?’ She told me the stories of several real people who had. Not that I want my characters to be sympathetic, but I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and I have struggled with Noah in that regard.”

West has five children: a daughter, 20, with former girlfriend Polly Astor, and two sons and two daughters aged 12, 10, nine and five, with his wife, the landscape designer Catherine FitzGerald. It is Catherine’s beef stew we have been eating for lunch, their children’s clothes drying on the Aga behind us. On a smaller table in a nook in the corner of the kitchen, next to some half-completed maths homework, is a pile of dad’s hardbacks: The Flame by Leonard Cohen, William Dalrymple’s retelling of the Indian mutiny of 1857, The Last Mughal, and Changing Stages, Richard Eyre and Nicholas Wright’s history of 20th-century theatre.

Out in the driveway, a small child’s BMX has been discarded in front of mum’s Audi A3, in perfect position to be crunched into the gravel next time the car sets off. At lunch, West didn’t know where the rice was because he and his family have only lived in this house, a former brewery in a Wiltshire hamlet, for a few weeks. They used to live in Shepherd’s Bush, in a house that once belonged to another actor from Sheffield, Brian Glover.

“I have led my family out of London slightly against their will,” West admits, “and quite legitimately want my children to be around plants and animals more than they perhaps might be in London. My wife said I’m trying to create my childhood home here and I said, [now, the thespian accent] ‘No I’m not! Preposterous! What do you mean? It’s nothing like that!’”

His wife’s childhood home is Glin Castle in County Limerick, Ireland, a true country pile (15 ensuite bedrooms, 380 acres, secret bookcase doors) that, in various versions, has been in her family for nearly 800 years. (It’s the house you can see in the background of the photographs on these pages.) She and West want to hold on to it. To do so, the house needs to become a going concern as an events and private hire venue to cover its annual £130,000 running costs.

“I do like history and I do like old buildings,” West says. “I’m also conscious of my wife’s father and his and her legacies. He worked in conservation in Ireland, to try and preserve these old buildings, which were out of favour for many years. It’s up to us to try and keep that going, because when they’re bought by hotels and the like, they’re often destroyed.”

This Christmas and New Year, he says, “we have a super-A-list celebrity taking it. Who, I can’t possibly divulge. Actually, can you do us a big favour and put the website, please, at the end of the piece? ‘Glin dash castle dot com.’ It would make my life easier.”

It’s time to do the school pick-up. “We can keep talking in the car,” he says, and leads the way to a silver Chrysler Grand Voyager. “It has,” West says, buckling up, “the biggest capacity of any people carrier.”

Precisely something a turning-50-next-year dad-of-five should say. “I have no problem getting older,” he says. “For male actors of my age there is less emphasis, and I have already started to play the dad of the lover instead of the lover. The pressure is off. Some swami said that the key to happiness is ‘I don’t mind what happens.’ You mind less about things, let go of them. Turning 50 is great. My daughter is also turning 21, so we should have quite a party.”

He has regrets. “I suppose I wish I had played more Shakespearean roles.”

What about the old-man ones? “Only Lear is as good as the young ones.”

What about not being James Bond? “Fuck no! I’m delighted now that I didn’t get it.”

Auditioning for Bond, in 2005, West turned up in a T-shirt and tatty jeans. “I remember the director, Martin Campbell, saying, ‘Thank Christ you haven’t turned up in a tux like everybody else’. It was for Casino Royale. At the time, I really wanted to get it. I love Bond, and I was the right age for it. They asked me, ‘What do you think should happen with Bond?’ And I said something deeply uninspired like, ‘I think he should go back to being more like Sean Connery’. I thought then that it was the best job you can do. Now, I’m not so sure. You have a year-and-a-half of hell doing publicity.”

West pulls up opposite the school. “Wait here. Enjoy the smell. Kids’ banana skins,” he says, opening the driver’s door. Puzzled, I sniff the air. There is no unpleasant aroma. The interior of Dominic West’s car smells perfectly fine. But, of course, he claims otherwise. He’s a terrific actor and a thoroughly likeable chap, but that self-deprecation still needs some work.

Colette is in cinemas on 11 January; glin-castle.com (https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/a25557268/dominic-west-interview/)

#les mis bbc #bbc les mis #dominic west #Interviews

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hasbro-necromancer · 7 years

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Had a enough to drink that it’s tipped my scale, so I’m going to be strikingly honest and share my pride and joy: my vocab list!

depilatory ≡ something used to remove unwanted hair

disburse ≡ to pay out (money from a fund)

debonair ≡ confident, stylish, charming, suave

covenant ≡ an agreement

cad ≡ rascal, scoundrel

heel ≡ rascal, scoundrel

wharf ≡ area to which a ship may moor to load and unload; quay, dock, pier, berth, jetty

extemporaneous ≡ spoken or done without preparation

guile ≡ sly or cunning intelligence

coif ≡ hairdo

datum ≡ piece of information; a fixed starting point or scale of operation

contrived ≡ deliberately created, as opposed to occurring naturally or spontaneously

abrogate ≡ repeal or do away with

agog ≡ very eager or excited

furrow ≡ a long and narrow trench made in the ground, especially by a plow for planting seeds or irrigation

inveigle ≡ persuade someone to do something using means of deception or flattery

rebuff ≡ reject in an abrupt or ungracious manner

wend ≡ go in a specified direction, typically slowly or by an indirect route

detritus ≡ waste or debris of any kind

fawn ≡ display exaggerated flattery or affections

preen ≡ put effort into making oneself look attractive; primp

denizen ≡ an inhabitant of a particular place

literati ≡ intellectuals who are interested in reading and commenting on literature

lariat ≡ a rope used as a lasso or for tethering

recidivism ≡ one’s relapse into undesirable activity after experiencing the negative consequences of it or having it be extinguished

frigate ≡ a warship with a mixed armament, generally heavier than a destroyer; used for convoy escort work

bolus ≡ a wad of substance, especially chewed food at the point of swallowing

griot ≡ a member of a class of traveling poets, musicians, and storytellers who maintain a tradition of oral history in West Africa

effigy ≡ a sculpture or model of a person

gopi ≡ a person in charge of a herd of cows (from Sanskrit)

lugubrious ≡ looking or sounding sad and dismal

precocious ≡ having developed or established certain behaviors at an earlier age than expected, especially with respect to children

glutinous ≡ like glue in texture; sticky

profuse ≡ plentiful; abundant, especially of something offered or discharged

myopia ≡ nearsightedness

bulwark ≡ a defensive wall; a ship's sides that extend above the level of the deck

nonplus ≡ surprise and confuse someone so much that they are unsure how to react

hauteur ≡ disdainful pride, scorn

addle ≡ confuse

expatriate ≡ a person who lives outside of their native country

moor ≡ a tract of uncultivated land, heath; a plot of land reserved for shooting

peal ≡ a loud ringing of bells

venerated ≡ honored, idolized, regarded with great respect

gall ≡ bold behavior

impudent ≡ not showing due respect for another person

ingratiate ≡ bring oneself into favor with other people by flattering or trying to please them

lascivious ≡ with overt and usually offensive sexual desire

rancor ≡ ire; anger; bitterness or resentfulness

succor ≡ aid; help in a time of need

cloy ≡ disgust with excessive sweetness or affection

chaparral ≡ vegetation, mainly tangled shrubs and thorny bushes

forfend ≡ avert, keep away, prevent something unpleasant

depone ≡ give evidence as a witness in a court of law

sacral ≡ of or related to sacred rites or symbols

sere ≡ (especially with regards to vegetation) dry or withered; arid; drought-stricken

abut ≡ lie adjacent to

bloviate ≡ to speak or write verbosely or windily

cupel ≡ a porous ceramic cup used in refining noble metals such as gold

tor ≡ a craggy peak; rocky peak or hill

swale ≡ a marshy hollow; a marshy depression between ridges

effete ≡ overrefined, pretentious, and ineffectual; decadent

emetic ≡ causing vomiting

professor ≡ a common title for early hot-air balloonists

pickelsome ≡ mischievous

pugnacious ≡ combative, fond of fight, stubborn, contentious

alacrity ≡ brisk and cheerful readiness

specie ≡ coins used as money

lambent ≡ (of light or fire) glowing, gleaming, or flickering with a soft radiance

conscription ≡ compulsory enlistment into state service, usually the armed forces

compulsory ≡ required by law or a rule; obligatory

weir ≡ small dam; horizontal barrier across a river that alters its flow and usually results in a change in its height

vim ≡ energy; enthusiasm

anodyne ≡ not likely to produce dissent or offense; inoffensive, usually deliberately so; a painkilling drug or medicine

trice ≡ in a moment; very quickly

judicious ≡ with good sense or judgement

proleptic ≡ the representation or assumption of a future act as if it had already occurred

fulminate ≡ explode; struck by lightning (direct latin translation)

facsimile ≡ an exact copy, especially in regards to written or printed material

vestiary ≡ of, or relating to, clothing

portent ≡ a sign or warning that an event, especially something momentous or calamitous, will occur

milieu ≡ a person’s social environment

kieselgur ≡ diatomite; a naturally occurring, soft, siliceous sedimentary rock; used to absorb nitroglycerin to form explosives (dynamite)

sobriquet ≡ nickname

penumbra ≡ a dark area within which a spot is illuminated; a surrounding or adjoining area in which something exists in a lesser degree

grifter ≡ a person who employs confidence tricks; a fraudster who swindles money after gaining a person or group’s trust

lode ≡ a vein of metal ore in the earth; a rich source of something

hie ≡ hustle; go quickly

hermeneutic ≡ a method or theory of interpretation, especially of the Bible and literary texts

crone ≡ an old woman who is ugly and thin

tog ≡ get dressed up for a certain occasion

abase ≡ belittle or demean

bole ≡ the trunk of a tree

apocryphal ≡ of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated as true

telluric ≡ of or belonging to the earth; arising from the earth or soil

heel ≡ carrying a sidearm

triage ≡ the process of assigning the order in which to treat patients, based on an assessment of the severity of their respective conditions, used for large numbers of patients or casualties or when resources are insufficient for all to create immediately

demure ≡ reserved, modest, and shy

bitumen ≡ black viscous liquid comprised of hydrocarbons obtained naturally or from petroleum distillation that is used in roads and roofing

fealty ≡ a feudal tenant’s or vassal’s sworn loyalty to a lord

ken ≡ one’s range of knowledge or sight

stelliform ≡ star-shaped

decoct ≡ extract the essence of by boiling or heating

debutante ≡ an upper-class young woman who is matured and presented to society, often going to parties or social gatherings to be seen by other members of the upper-class

lurid ≡ extremely vivid in color, often to the point of creating an unpleasantly harsh or unnatural effect

rostrum ≡ a raised platform on which a person gives a speech, receives a medal or award, plays music, or conducts an orchestra

agnate ≡ descended from the same male ancestor as another person

entente ≡ a friendly understanding or informal alliance between states

abase ≡ behave in a way so as to belittle or degrade someone

alee ≡ on the side of the ship that is sheltered by the wind

meerschaum ≡ a soft white claylike material consisting of hydrated magnesium silicate; a pipe made from said material

caterwaul ≡ make a shrill howling or wailing noise

cotillion ≡ formal ball

sapphic ≡ lesbian; relating to lesbianism

precipitous ≡ dangerously high or steep

éclat ≡ brilliant display or effect

histrionic ≡ overly theatrical or melodramatic; exaggerated dramatic behavior designed to attract attention

crepuscular ≡ of, resembling, or relating to twilight

sangfroid ≡ composure or coolness, sometimes excessive, shown during dangerous or trying circumstances

prandial ≡ of or relating to dinner or lunch

impertinent ≡ not showing proper respect, rude

tyro ≡ beginner or novice

cur ≡ a contemptible man; an overly aggressive dog

nacre ≡ mother-of-pearl

troglodyte ≡ someone who lives in a cave; a hermit

eidetic ≡ able to recall in vivid and extreme detail events, particularly visual ones, after only brief exposure

curated ≡ surrounded by walls

tincture ≡ a slight trace of something

hirsute ≡ hairy

simper ≡ smile or gesture in a coquettish or coy manner

replete ≡ filled or well-supplied with something

erne ≡ sea eagle

prudent ≡ acting with or showing care and thought towards the future

puerile ≡ childishly silly or trivial

kayfabe ≡ portraying staged events as “real” or “true,” as in wrestling

enure ≡ to grow accustomed to

élan ≡ stylish enthusiasm, stylish vigor

afflatus ≡ a divine creative impulse or inspiration

argot ≡ the jargon or slang of a particular group

redolent ≡ strongly reminiscent of

nystagmus ≡ a vision condition in which the eyes make repetitive, uncontrolled movements; often result in reduced vision and depth perception which can affect balance and coordination

fantod ≡ a state or attack of uneasiness or unreasonableness

alfresco ≡ in the open air

sinecure ≡ a position that requires little or no work but gives the holder status or financial benefit

strabismic ≡ crosseyed; with eyes not properly aligned while looking at an object

dirigible ≡ capable of being steered, guided, or directed

tumid ≡ swollen

candent ≡ glowing with heat

atavistic ≡ relating to or characterized by reversion to something ancient or ancestral

demure ≡ (of a woman or her behavior) reserved, modest, or shy

rapacious ≡ aggressively greedy or grasping

profligate ≡ recklessly extravagant or wasteful in the use of resources

picayune ≡ petty; worthless

apoplectic ≡ overcome with anger; extremely indignant; relating to a stroke

bellicose ≡ demonstrating aggression and willingness to fight

thanatoptic ≡ meditating on or contemplating death

abstruse ≡ difficult to understand; obscure

amanuensis ≡ a literary or artistic assistant, in particular one who takes dictation or copies manuscripts

falcate ≡ curved like a sickle; hooked

stolid ≡ calm, dependable, showing little emotion or animation

jejune ≡ naive, simplistic, superficial

fulgurant ≡ flashing like lightning; brilliant

hagiography ≡ biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader

aspersion ≡ sprinkling with water (especially holy water)

saprogenic ≡ causing or produced by putrefaction or decay

recalcitrant ≡ having an obstinately uncooperative attitude towards authority or discipline

obstinate ≡ stubbornly refusing to change one’s opinion or chosen course of action, despite attempts to persuade one to do so

salacious ≡ having or conveying undue or inappropriate interest in sexual matters

cuirass ≡ piece of armor consisting of a breastplate and backplate joined together

misprision ≡ the deliberate concealment of one’s knowledge of treason or a felony

rictus ≡ fixed grimace or grin

aspen ≡ any of various poplars having soft wood and ovate leaves that tremble in the slightest breeze

cognomen ≡ an extra personal name given to a (Roman) citizen that functions like a nickname and is typically passed down from father to son

propinquous ≡ in close proximity; having close kinship

solecism ≡ a grammatical mistake in speech or writing

treacle ≡ British term for molasses; cloying sentimentality or flattery

bedouin ≡ a nomadic Arab of the desert

hoar ≡ grayish white; frosty coat

fulguration ≡ a procedure used to remove or destroy tissue using high-frequency electric current applied with a needlelike electrode

pert ≡ boldly forward in speech or behavior; impertinent; saucy

replete ≡ filled or well-supplied with something

ebullient ≡ cheerful and full of energy

insouciant ≡ showing a casual lack of concern; indifferent

sinistral ≡ of or on the left side or the left hand (the opposite of dextral); left-handed

erumpent ≡ bursting forth through a surface

coeval ≡ having the same age or date of origin; contemporary

obstreperous ≡ noisy and difficult to control

brisance ≡ the shattering capability of a high explosive, determined mainly by its detonation pressure

lacrimation ≡ the flow of tears

Dullahan ≡ a headless rider, usually on a black horse carrying their head under their arm, with their mouth in a hideous grin that touches both sides of their head

cerise ≡ a bright or deep red color

aplomb ≡ self-assuredness, especially in a demanding situation

threnody ≡ a lament

phosphene ≡ a ring or spot caused by applying pressure to the eyes or by direct stimulation of the visual system other than by light

confabulate ≡ fabricate imaginary experiences as compensation for loss of memory

valise ≡ a small traveling bag or suitcase

propitiate ≡ win or regain the favor of (a god, spirit, or person) by doing something that pleases them

putative ≡ generally considered or reputed to be

delirium tremens ≡ an acute, sometimes fatal episode of delirium that is caused by withdrawal or abstinence from alcohol after habitual excessive use, characterized by sweating, anxiety, confusion, shaking, trembling, and hallucinations

tremens ≡ trembling, shaking, shuddering

foible ≡ a minor weakness or eccentricity in someone’s character

voluble ≡ speaking or spoken incessantly or fluently

languor ≡ weakness or weariness of body or mind; the stare or feeling, often pleasant, of tiredness or inertia; an oppressive stillness of the air

saperlipopette ≡ goodness me; fiddlesticks (from French)

#vocab #words

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