coriaceous /kor-ee-AY-shəs/. adjective. Leather-like. Resembling leather. From Latin coriaceus (same meaning), from Latin corium (hide, leather, skin) + -aceus (of the nature of). See also scoriaceous (having the nature of scoria (masses, slag, dross)) and cuirass (originally a body armor made of leather).
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catafalque
catafalque /KAT-ə-fahlk/. noun. A temporary platform or tomb on which a body is laid in state for a funeral and/or procession. In Roman Catholic funerals, a coffin-shaped object draped with a pall, representing the corpse. From Italian catafalco (same meaning), from Greek kata (down or beside) + fala (scaffolding, or a wooden tower). The Medieval Latin use led to the French chafaud and échafaud (scaffold).
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chine
chine /CHIYN/. noun or verb. The spine or backbone. The rim of a cask formed by the ends of the staves. In cooking, a cut or joing that includes the spine and connected flesh. In geography, the crest of a ridge though also, historically (and oddly), a fissure or crack in the earth. In shipbuilding, the change in angle of the cross-section of a hull, where the bottom and sides meet (such as a sharp chine). As a verb, to cut through the spine when butchering. From Middle English chyne, from Middle French eschine, then things get hairy but it appears to be a blend of the Germanic source of shin and Latin spina (spine).
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coffle (kaffle)
coffle (kaffle) /KAW-fəl/. noun. A train or chain of humans or animals, usually slaves. From Arabic qāfilah (caravan).
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chrisom
chrisom /KRI-zəm/. noun. A child’s baptismal robe (originally a face cloth) or, upon death before 30 days old, a burial shroud. Derived from pronunciation of chrism, a sacramental balm or oil. From Greek khriein (to anoint). See also chrisomes (children who die in their first month of life).
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cullion
cullion /KUL-yən/. noun. A vile fellow; a despicable rascal. Also, a testicle. Derived from Latin cōleus, culleus (bag, testicle). See also (if you must): colho, cojon and coglione.
“Away, base cullions!” (William Shakespeare)
“That’s a fine thing that cullion of a son of yours is after doing now.” (Benjamin Black)
“If you think me a whore, where are the gifts I have received from my lovers? All the gifts I have are given me by my husband, the whoreson foul-mouthed cullion who tries to buy my goodwill for his own lusts because the priests have made him half a eunuch!” (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
“Do you see nothing? clodpatel Huguenot! varlet! cullion! What brought you here into my studio?” (Honoré de Balzac)
“Their wives and loveliest daughters constuprated by every base cullion, as Sejanus’ daughter was by the hangman in public, before their fathers and husbands’ faces.” (Robert Burton)
“But by the croys which that Seint Eleyne fond,
I wolde I hadde thy coillons in myn hond
In stide of relikes or of seintuarie.”
(Chaucer)
caruncle
caruncle /kə-RUN-kəl/. noun. A fleshy outgrowth. A naked excrescence of tissue. For example: a turkey’s wattle or a person’s dewlap. From Latin caruncula (little piece of flesh), diminutive of caro (flesh).
“I was so scattered, I’m still not sure what to write: About my back aching from where I’d slept? my head still gauzed, Pharaohnically wrapped, from when I’d been woken up? about the cut on my neck? the slit from chin’s caruncle to neck like an against the grain shaving mishap, just healing?” (Joshua Cohen)
“Crooke states that the hymen is not a single membrane but is really made up of eight parts, ‘caruncles’ and membranes, and says that ‘all these particles together make the form of the cup of a little rose half blowne.'” (Hanne Blank)
“We had plenty of farmyard creatures, as, for example, rabbits, the most oval animal of all, if you know what I mean; and choleric turkeys with carbuncular caruncles…” (Vladimir Nabokov)
“His Eminence slapped him again: ‘Vainglorious hypocrite, don’t you know your soul looks like a turkey’s? It pecks its way close to the ground, shaped like a peg, it pecks and pegs, peck by peck it pegs away. Soul of a pecker! A pecker blinkered by its engorged snoods, your eyes can only see the ground to peck, and nothing more. You selfish gobbler! I see them well, I see the waddles and caruncles on your soul!'” (Giulio Tononi)
Select Synonyms: tassel, wattle, cockscomb, aigrette, crista, copple.
Elsewhere: Wordnik.