aestival \ES-tuh-vuhl\, adjective:
Of or belonging to the summer; as, aestival diseases. [Spelled also estival.]
Far to the north and hemmed in against the Russian Bear, it is easy to overlook this land of lakes, forests, and aestival white nights.
-- [i.e. Finland]
You generally get true summer in August: this year it has been unusually æstival.
-- M. Collins
From the Latin æstas, summer. Also from æstas:
slugabed \SLUHG-uh-bed\, noun:
One who stays in bed until a late hour; a sluggard.
Nemecek's business is not for slugabeds. He opens for business every weekday at 4 a.m.
-- Drew Fetherston, "He Can Really Make Pigs Fly", Newsday, December 12, 1994
I found Oriana, as usual, up before me, for I always was a sad slugabed.
-- W. Hurton, Doomed Ship
All save Whit elected to sleep in that morning. Whit came back to report that he had spotted the tracks of a doe and a fawn made in the new snow directly beneath my unoccupied stand, and I regretted being a slugabed.
-- "Paying Tribute to Deer in Minnesota Woods", New York Times, December 6, 1998
Slugabed is from slug, "sluggard" + abed, "in bed."
desultory \DES-uhl-tor-ee\, adjective:
1. Jumping or passing from one thing or subject to another without order or rational connection; disconnected; aimless.
2. By the way; as a digression; not connected with the subject.
3. Coming disconnectedly or occurring haphazardly; random.
4. Disappointing in performance or progress.
The shadows on the perfect lawn were straight and angular; they were the shadows of an old man sitting in a deep wicker-chair near the low table on which the tea had been served, and of two younger men strolling to and fro, in desultory talk, in front of him.
-- Henry James Jr., "The Portrait of a Lady", The Atlantic Monthly, November 1880
In January 1905 Richard Watson Gilder approached the then-president of the Institute, the genteel poet and Wall Street broker Edmund Clarence Stedman, and urged him to hold a "formal discussion" on the question of women in both the Institute and the newly created Academy -- a formal discussion, he said, rather than the "desultory talk among members" that was all there had been so far.
-- Penelope Lively, The Five Thousand and One Nights
One way or the other, his once voluminous exchanges with Mrs. Swanson dwindled to almost nothing. For a year or two, they consisted of the odd, desultory postcard, then the store-bought Christmas greeting, and then, by 1976, they had stopped altogether.
-- Paul Auster, Timbuktu
But talks were desultory, and Gates held little hope the two companies would get together.
-- Paul Andrews, How The Web Was Won
Desultory comes from Latin desultorius, from desultor, "a leaper," from the past participle of desilire, "to leap down," from de-, "down from" + salire, "to leap."
scion \SY-uhn\, noun:
1. A detached shoot or twig of a plant used for grafting.
2. Hence, a descendant; an heir.
Convinced he was the scion of Louis Alexandre Lebris de Kerouac, a noble Breton, he was off to do genealogical research in the Paris libraries and then to locate his ancestor's hometown in Brittany.
-- Ellis Amburn, Subterranean Kerouac
Sassoon, scion of a famously wealthy Jewish banking family, had never needed to earn his living.
-- Philip Hoare, Oscar Wilde's Last Stand
Gates is the scion of an old, affluent Seattle family; Jobs is the adopted son of a machinist in Northern California.
-- "Steve Jobs, Hesitant Co-Founder, Makes New Commitment to Apple", New York Times, August 7, 1997
Scion derives from Old French cion, of Germanic origin.
bandog \BAN-dog\, noun:
A mastiff or other large and fierce dog, usually kept chained or tied up.
The keeper entered leading his bandog, a large bloodhound, tied in a leam, or band, from which he takes his name.
-- Sir W. Scott
As fierce as a bandog that has newly broke his chain.'
-- Sir George Etherege, The Comical Revenge; or, Love in a Tub
He was usually spoken of as the bandog of Burgundy, or the Alsatian mastiff.
-- Scott
From Middle English bandogge, from band + dogge (dog).
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