50bookchallenge, 15000pages

Book #84 -- William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra (Folger Shakespeare Library), 87 pages.

Not exactly my favourite of Shakespeare's plays. In fact, I have to admit I find all the characters pretty pathetic. Does that make me a horrible English major?

Progress toward goals: 320/365 = 87.7%

Books: 84/100 = 84.0%

Pages: 21194/25000 = 84.8%

2009 Book List

cross-posted to 15000pages, 50bookchallenge, and gwynraven

Definitions

burnoose/burnouse: (n) 1. A mantle or cloak with a hood, an upper garment extensively worn by Arabs and Moors.
2. A kind of cloak or mantle worn by women, resembling the Arabian garment.



tumulus: (n) An ancient sepulchral mound, a barrow.



recondite: (adj) 1. Especially of a subject of study or discussion: little known or understood; abstruse, obscure; profound.
2. Of study, discussion, etc.: consisting in, or relating to, little-known or abstruse knowledge; esoteric.
3. Of language, literature, a literary source, etc.: obscure, little known.
4. Of a writer: using abstruse or obscure allusions or references.
5. Of a thing: removed or hidden from view; kept out of sight.
6. In Entomology and Botany: Not easily seen; hidden or concealed by another part.
7. Retiring; avoiding notice.



motet: (n) A short vocal composition, especially a polyphonic piece for liturgical use or for setting a religious text. In early use also more generally: a melody, a song.



satrap: (n) 1. A governor of a province under the ancient Persian monarchy. (In the Book of Daniel anachronistically attributed to the Babylonian empire.)
2. A subordinate ruler; often suggesting an imputation of tyranny or ostentatious splendour.



satrapy: (n) 1. A province ruled over by a satrap.
2. The dignity of a satrap.
3. The body of satraps.
4. The period of rule of a satrap.



tontine: (n) 1. A financial scheme by which the subscribers to a loan or common fund receive each an annuity during his life, which increases as their number is diminished by death, till the last survivor enjoys the whole income; also applied to the share or right of each subscriber.
2. A game of cards played on the tontine principle.
3. Applied to a friendly society which shares out its unexpended funds at the end of the year.



flâneur: (n) A lounger or saunterer, an idle ‘man about town.’



bouzouki: (n) In Greece, a sort of mandoline.



antinomian: (adj) 1. Opposed to the obligatoriness of the moral law; of or pertaining to the antinomians.
(n) 2. One who maintains that the moral law is not binding upon Christians, under the ‘law of grace.’ specifically one of a sect which appeared in Germany in 1535, alleged to hold this opinion.



bromide: (n) 1. A primary compound of bromine with an element or organic radical. Several bromides (especially those of ammonium, iron, and potassium) are in common medicinal use.
2. A dose of potassium bromide taken as a sedative.
3. A person whose thoughts and conversation are conventional and commonplace. Also, a commonplace saying, trite remark, conventionalism; a soothing statement.
4. A reproduction or proof on bromide paper; a bromide print.



astrogation: (n) Used by science fiction writers beginning in the first half of the 20th century to denote navigation of spacecraft, either in interplanetary travel or in interstellar travel. The mathematical principles governing interplanetary astrogation were derived by mathematical physicists in the 19th and 20th centuries.



brevet: (n) 1. An official or authoritative message in writing; especially a Papal Indulgence.
2. An official document granting certain privileges from a sovereign or government; spec. in the Army, a document conferring nominal rank on an officer, but giving no right to extra pay.
(v) 3. To raise to a certain rank by brevet.



autodidact: (n) One who is self-taught.