Me and My Manque

 Here are ten little known, but most useful words.  Enjoy!

 

charientism                    monopsony

coffle                            parkour

ganosis                         rictus

inquiline                        sorites

manque                         zarf

 

1. Aren’t those Greek nudes embarrassing? What is the act of reducing sheen on marble as practiced by the prudish censors of fashion in classical antiquity?
2. What is a cup-shaped device for holding hot coffee?
3. What is a chained line of slaves, prisoners or animals?
4. What is word for the gaping mouth of the dead or of a Munchish screamer?
5. What adjective describes one who dwells in a place not his own?
6. How would you describe a person who has proved lacking and failed to achieve a role to which he or she aspires or is suited?
7. What is the art of efficient flight as practiced so memorably by James Bond?
8. What is the art of stating an unpleasant thing in an agreeable manner?
9. What is an argument formed by linked smaller arguments?
10. What is the opposite of a monopoly, where there is only one buyer and many sellers?

Answers and Explanations:

 

1. ganosis: derives from the Greek ganos: bright. 
2. zarf: derived from an Arabic word meaning container.  A zarf is usually made of metal.
3. coffle: derived from Arabic qafilah: caravan or traveling company. This word was first used in 1799 to refer to animals strung together and soon thereafter to slaves.
4. rictus: Here is an example from Sylvia Plath’s Crossing Water: “Under the eyes of the stars and the moon’s rictus/ He (sc. an insomniac) suffers his desert pillow.”
5. inquiline: This is especially good word to describe the guest who will not leave.
6. manqué (mon-KAY): derives from Latin adjective mancus: crippled.  Following the French, the feminine form is manqué.  Here is illustrative sentence from the OED: “As Leo’s self-esteem dwindled, Gertrude’s grew and grew, and she assumed the one role that her chronically manqué brother had brilliantly, if all too briefly, filled: that of art patron.” (Life of Picasso, J. Richardson) Manque is often placed after the noun: My brother, an actor manqué, is parading about in a dog costume for Purina Dog Chow. “Me and my monkey,” a phrase employed by the Beatles and other songwriters, is a play on this meaning, meaning “Me and my failed self.”
7. parkour (pahr-KOOR): derived from the French parcours: route. The Frenchman David Belle, the inventor of this word, defined parkour: “. . . getting over all the obstacles in you path as you would in an emergency.  You want to move in such a way, with any movement, as to help you gain the most ground on someone or something, whether escaping from it or chasing toward it.”
8. charientism. From Greek charis: grace. Charientism “covers over” or “takes the sting out of” what has been said. Charientism is to be differentiated from asteism (from a Greek root meaing “town bred” and by extension “urbane”) the art of “genteel irony, polite and ingenious mockery” and from mycterism, a less subtle form of ridicule where the nose (G. mycter) is employed to express ill-concealed scorn but not as overt as sarcasm (literally, a tearing of the flesh).  Sarcasm distains grace (charientism), urbanity (asterism) or any attempt at concealment (mycterism).
9. sorites (suh-REYE-teez): derived from the Greek soros: heap. Here is a simple sorites:  All A is B.  All B is C.  All C is D. Add D is E.  Therefore all A is E. But a sorites can be more curious:  Premise 1: A million grains of sand is a heap of sand. Premise 2: A heap of sand minus one grain is still a heap of sand.  Now repeat Premise 2 (each time starting with one less number of grains), until you arrive at paradoxical conclusion that a heap of sand may be composed of just one grain of sand.  Or maybe not. 
10. monopsony (mun-OP-shuh-nee): Monopsony can be particularly egregious if the government is the sole buyer for the goods of a large number of merchants.