Definitions

mullein: (n) Any of various plants of the genus Verbascum, typically with rosettes of greyish wooly leaves and tall erect racemes of flowers.

raceme: (n) A simple inflorescence in which the flowers are arranged on short, nearly equal, lateral pedicels at equal distances on an elongated axis.

laetation: (n) A manuring; also manure.

repastination: (n) The action or process of digging over again.

succedaneous: (adj) 1. Taking, or serving in, the place of something else; acting as a succedaneum or substitute.
2. Supplementary.

succedaneum: (n) A thing which (or rarely a person who) replaces or serves in the place of another; a substitute.

caryatid: (n) A female figure used as a column to support an entablature.

entablature: (n) In Architecture, that part of an order which is above the column; including the architrave, the frieze, and the cornice.

order: (n) In Gothic and Romanesque architecture: each of a series of mouldings on an arch.

architrave: (n) 1. The lowest division of the entablature, consisting of the main beam that rests immediately upon the abacus on the capital of a column; the epistyle.
2. Collective name for various parts (lintel, jambs, and their mouldings) that surround a doorway or window.
3. Ornamental moulding around the exterior of an arch.

capital (1): (n) The head or top of a column or pillar.

abacus: (n) In Architecture, the upper member of the capital of a column, supporting the architrave; in Tuscan, Doric, and ancient Ionic orders, a square flat plate, but in the Corinthian and Composite, variously cut and ornamented.

epistyle: (n) = architrave.

frieze: (n) 1. That member in the entablature of an order which comes between the architrave and cornice; the hypotrachelium.
2. A band of painted or sculpted decoration

hypotrachelium: (n) The lower part or neck of the capital of a column; in the Doric order, the groove or sinking between the neck of the capital and the shaft.

cornice: (n) 1. A horizontal moulded projection which crowns or finishes a building or some part of a building; specifically the uppermost member of the entablature of an order surmounting the frieze.

verdure: (n) 1. The fresh green colour characteristic of flourishing vegetation; greenness, viridity.
2. Green vegetation; plants or trees, or parts of these, in a green and flourishing state, esp. green grass or herbage.
3. A rich tapestry ornamented with representations of trees or other vegetation.
4. Freshness or agreeable briskness of taste in fruits or liquors; also simply, taste, savour.
5. Smell; odour.
6. Fresh or flourishing condition.

virid: (adj) Green, verdant.

vitreous: (adj) 1. Of or belonging to, consisting or composed of, glass; of the nature of glass; glassy; esp. vitreous silica, an amorphous, translucent or transparent form of silica obtained by rapid quenching from the molten state.
2. In Geology and Minerology, resembling glass in brittleness, hardness, lustre, and mode of cleavage.
3. In Chemistry, resembling glass in composition.

selvage, also selvedge: (n) 1. The edge of a piece of woven material finished in such a manner as to prevent the ravelling out of the weft. Also, a narrow strip or list at the edge of a web of cloth, which is not finished like the rest of the cloth, being intended to be cut off or covered by the seam when the material is made up.
2. A marginal tract, border, edge.
3. An ornamental border or edging.
4. (v) to form a boundary or edging to.

weft: (n) The threads that cross from side to side of a web, at right angles to the warp threads with which they are interlaced.

list: (n) border, edging, strip; esp. the selvage, border, or edge of a cloth, usually of different material from the body of the cloth.

fluviatile: (adj) Of or pertaining to a river or rivers; found, growing, or living in rivers; formed or produced by the action of rivers.

No excuse

"Accursed bed he who sins in ignorance, if that ignorance be caused by sloth."

--Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteeth Century

Definitions -- literariness

encomium: (n) A formal or high-flown expression of praise; a eulogy, panegyric.

panegyric: (n) 1. A public speech or writing in praise of some person, thing, or achievement; a laudatory discourse, a formal or elaborate encomium or eulogy.
2. Elaborate praise; eulogy; laudation.

eulogy: (n) 1. A speech or writing in commendation of the character and services of a person, or the qualities of a thing; esp. a set oration in honour of a deceased person.
2. Eulogistic speaking; commendation, praise.

elegy: (n) 1. A song of lamentation, esp a funeral song or lament for the dead.
2. Vaguely used in the wider sense, apparently originally including all the species of poetry for which Greek and Latin poets adopted the elegaic metre.
3. Poetry, or a poem, written in elegaic metre; an elegaic distich.

distich: (n) A couple of lines of verse, usually making complete sense, and (in modern poetry) riming; a couplet.

I tend very often to get elegy and eulogy mixed up, mainly because both are associated with poems about dead people. It is of course made more difficult by the fact that a poem honouring the deceased may be both an elegy and a eulogy, or it may be one but not the other, or it may be neither. In addition, neither elegy nor eulogy are required to be funereal, so either one could be about either a live person, or a place, or practically anything else. Of course, I am a working on an MA in literature. You'd think I'd have gotten this figured out by now.