cozen \KUZ-un\, transitive verb:
1. To cheat; to defraud; to deceive, usually by petty tricks.
2. To obtain by deceit.

intransitive verb:
1. To act deceitfully.

You would naturally not think so flat a rogue could cozen you. But have a care! These half idiots have a sort of cunning, as the skunk has its stench.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson, The Master of Ballantrae

The men who circle endlessly around her are mostly louts and losers. We watch them, at some length, as they drink, dope, cozen each other and tirelessly mistreat women.
-- Brad Leithauser, "Capturer of Hearts", New York Times, April 7, 1996

Pound, discussing Loy and Moore together, made a stab: "In the verses of Marianne Moore I detect traces of emotion; in that of Mina Loy I detect no emotion whatever." No, not absence of feeling; refusal, rather, to cozen her readers by appeal to feeling.
-- Hugh Kenner, "To Be the Brancusi of Poetry", New York Times, May 16, 1982

The rich man, argued Fox, is 'the greatest thief' because he acquired his wealth 'by cozening and cheating, by lying and defrauding'.
-- James Walvin, The Quakers

Cozen perhaps derives from Early Modern French cousiner, "to defraud; literally to treat as if a cousin (hence to claim to be a cousin in order to defraud)," from Old French cosin.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for cozen


commination \kom-uh-NAY-shuhn\, noun:
1. A denunciation.
2. A threat of punishment.

Vishnevskaya's powerful story is full of ferocious, grandly operatic comminations of vicious authorities and toadying colleagues.
-- Terry Teachout, review of Galina: A Russian Story by Galina Vishnevskaya, National Review, March 22, 1985

At last the leaders of the Democratic Party have moved decisively, hauling out their ripest comminations and hurling them at -- no, not at George Bush.
-- Alexander Cockburn, "No place in the Democratic Party", The Nation, March 31, 2003

An early copy had been seen by Anne Fine, our retiring Children's Laureate, and, as one of her final acts..., she issued a commination against it in the Guardian newspaper, buttressed by many spicy quotations.
-- Brian Alderson, "Message in a bottle", Horn Book Magazine, September 1, 2003

Commination is derived from Latin comminatio, commination-, from comminari, "to threaten," from com-, intensive prefix + minari, "to threaten."



pukka \PUHK-uh\, adjective:
1. Authentic; genuine.
2. Good of its kind; first-class.

He talks like the quintessential pukka Englishman and quotes Chesterton and Kipling by the yard and yet he has chosen to live most of his adult life abroad.
-- Lynn Barber, "Bell book . . . and then what?", The Observer, August 27, 2000

If he does not have a house, the government gives him a pukka residence, not a . . . shack on the pavement but a solid construction.
-- Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet

Pukka comes from Hindi pakka, "cooked, ripe," from Sanskrit pakva-, from pacati, "he cooks."



temporize \TEM-puh-ryz\, intransitive verb:
1. To be indecisive or evasive in order to gain time or delay action.
2. To comply with the time or occasion; to yield to prevailing opinion or circumstances.
3. To engage in discussions or negotiations so as to gain time (usually followed by 'with').
4. To come to terms (usually followed by 'with').

The best Dukakis game plan would seem to be to take a leaf from Jesse's book: make no final deals, temporize, and talk it to death.
-- John McLaughlin, "What to do with Jesse?", National Review, October 14, 1988

But when it comes to paying out claims, too many third-party providers stall, balk and temporize.
-- Stacie Zoe Berg, "Rx for reluctant health insurers", Insight on the News, September 22, 1997

On the big issues, Reagan rejected the importuning of his senior aides. He refused to temporize on the 1981 tax cut that ended Jimmy Carter's stagflation. At Reykjavik in 1985, he turned down State Department advice for an arms deal and stood fast to open the way for the Soviet collapse.
-- Robert Novak, "For the Great Communicator, presidency was about big dreams", Chicago Sun-Times, June 2004

The only alternative policy is to temporize, to make a series of concessions to North Korea as a way to buy time.
-- Charles Krauthammer, "U.S. should appease N. Korea -- temporarily", Deseret News, March 9, 2003

In the end, the price that was paid was tragically so much higher than it would have been if the democracies had shed their illusions that they could temporize with evil.
-- Mortimer B. Zuckerman, "It's time to fight back", US News & World Report, September 7, 1998

temporize derives from Medieval Latin temporizare, "to pass the time," from Latin tempus, tempor-, "time." It is related to temporary.


masticate \MAS-tih-kayt\, transitive verb:
1. To grind or crush with or as if with the teeth in preparation for swallowing and digestion; to chew; as, "to masticate food."
2. To crush or knead (rubber, for example) into a pulp.

intransitive verb:
1. To chew food.

Honestly, folks, the people at the next table ordered the same dish, and I watched as a young couple tried in vain to masticate those fossilized pieces of "toast."
-- Pat Bruno, "Hits and misses", Chicago Sun-Times, June 2002

Their powerful jaws allow hyenas to masticate not only flesh and entrails, but bones, horns, and even the teeth of their prey.
-- Sam Tauschek, "A Hyena is no laughing matter", Sports Afield, May 2001

In 1820, Thomas Hancock invented a machine that could masticate, mix and soften rubber.
-- Rikki Lamba, "Effect of carbon black on dynamic properties", Rubber World, April 1, 2000

At restaurants the Hamnelier (swine server) would bring out your entree, cut your first bite using special tongs and a pig sticker (sorry) and proffer it to your lips. You would sniff, suck, masticate, savor and swallow.
-- Baxter Black, "The Other White Meat' Develops Snob Appeal", Denver Rocky Mountain News, September 20, 1998

Masticate comes from the past participle of Late Latin masticare, "to chew," from Greek mastichan, "to gnash the teeth." The noun form is mastication.



plenipotentiary \plen-uh-puh-TEN-shee-air-ee; -shuh-ree\, adjective:
1. Containing or conferring full power; invested with full power; as, "plenipotentiary license; plenipotentiary ministers."

noun:
1. A person invested with full power to transact any business; especially, an ambassador or diplomatic agent with full power to negotiate a treaty or to transact other business.

There were two accounts, one in a news article, the second in the editorial section, telling the minihistory of Pol Pot, sometime plenipotentiary ruler of Cambodia.
-- William F. Buckley Jr., The Redhunter

At that time, Egypt was our protectorate, which meant the High Commissioner was the plenipotentiary of George V and carried independent authority.
-- David Freeman, One of Us

Plenipotentiary derives from Latin plenus, "full" + potens, "powerful."


nebbish \NEB-ish\, noun:
A weak-willed, timid, or ineffectual person.

You used to be a nebbish, a noodle, a fool
And now you're Mr. Big Time with your own private pool.
-- Maira Kalman, Max in Hollywood, Baby

Poor Humphrey is a nebbish, a fellow whose private passivity is intended to contrast with the dramatic historic events that sweep around him.
-- Mason Buck, review of The Red Cabbage Café, by Jonathan Treitel, New York Times, February 3, 1997

He is a nebbish who might be played effectively by Woody Allen. He attracts the sympathy of lower-echelon mammals but finds it difficult to relate to dogs and human beings.
-- Evan Hunter, "American Mayhem, Soviet Intrigue", New York Times, October 9, 1983

Nebbish is from Yiddish nebekh, "poor, unfortunate," of Slavic origin.



en masse \en MASS; on MASS\, adverb:
All together; as a whole.

United nations personnel, including military observers, pulled out en masse from Sierra Leone's rebel-besieged capital, Freetown.
-- "United Nations personnel pull out of capital", Irish Times, January 7, 1999

Following news of her husband's demise, Mary O'Sullivan united her children in London, and in the fall of 1827 they moved en masse to New York.
-- Edward L. Widmer, Young America

There was a moment of stunned silence and then frenzied applause, bellowing cheers, as the audience rose en masse from their seats.
-- Anne Edwards, Streisand: A Biography

Embittered by the spurning of his own work, he takes satisfaction in suckering the entire art world en masse, then pulling aside the curtain, exposing himself as a renegade genius and the art experts as the frauds and fools.
-- Peter Landesman, "A 20th-Century Master Scam", New York Times Magazine, July 18, 1999

En masse comes from the French en, "in" + masse, "mass."


abed \uh-BED\, adverb:
In bed.

When I lay abed as a boy in our ranch house, listening to those trucks growl their way up highway 281, the sound of those motors came to seem as organic as the sounds of the various birds and animals who were apt to make noises in the night.
-- Larry McMurtry, Roads: Driving America's Great Highways

Abed is the prefix a-, "in, on" (from Old English an) + bed (from Old English bedd).



diaphanous \dy-AF-uh-nuhs\, adjective:
1. Of such fine texture as to allow light to pass through; translucent or transparent.
2. Vague; insubstantial.

The curtains are thin, a diaphanous membrane that can't quite contain the light outside.
-- Eric Liu, The Accidental Asian

She needed more than diaphanous hope, more than I could give her.
-- Tej Rae, "One Hand Extended", Washington Post, August 12, 2001

Diaphanous ultimately derives from Greek diaphanes, "showing through," from diaphainein, "to show through, to be transparent," from dia-, "through" + phainein, "to show, to appear." It is related to phantom, something apparently sensed but having no physical reality.


sanctum \SANK-tum\, noun;
plural sanctums or sancta::
1. A sacred place.
2. A place of retreat where one is free from intrusion.

What's more, the babble of radios, televisions and raised voices from the other households in the condominium rarely penetrated this sanctum.
-- Tim Parks, Mimi's Ghost

Seymour has spent most of her research time in that sanctum of the professional biographer, the London Library.
-- John Mullan, "The agony and the ecstasy", The Guardian, December 23, 2000

Sanctum comes from the Latin, meaning "holy, sacred, or inviolable."


epicene \EP-uh-seen\, adjective:
1. Having the characteristics of both sexes.
2. Effeminate; unmasculine.
3. Sexless; neuter.
4. (Linguistics) Having but one form of the noun for both the male and the female.

noun:
1. A person or thing that is epicene.
2. (Linguistics) An epicene word.

He has a clear-eyed, epicene handsomeness -- cruel, sensuous mouth; cheekbones to cut your heart on -- the sort of excessive beauty that is best appreciated in repose on a 50-foot screen.
-- Franz Lidz, "Jude Law: He Didn't Turn Out Obscure at All", New York Times, May 13, 2001

She smothers (almost literally at times) her weak, epicene son Vladimir, and is prepared to commit any crime to see him become Tsar, despite his reluctance.
-- Ronald Bergan, Sergei Eisenstein: A Life in Conflict

Epicene derives from Latin epicoenus, from Greek epikoinos, "common to," from epi-, "upon" + koinos, "common."


redolent \RED-uh-luhnt\, adjective:
1. Having or exuding fragrance; scented; aromatic.
2. Full of fragrance; odorous; smelling (usually used with 'of' or 'with').
3. Serving to bring to mind; evocative; suggestive; reminiscent (usually used with 'of' or 'with').

The 142-foot-long sidewheeled steamer . . . ferried people from place to place, . . . its two decks redolent with the aroma of fresh grapes, peaches, and other fruit headed for the rail spur at the Canandaigua pier, then on to markets in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.
-- A. M. Sperber and Eric Lax, Bogart

The simple, semisweet and moist cake was redolent of cinnamon and nutmeg and studded with Mr. McCartney's favorite nuts, pecans.
-- Bryan Miller, "Lots of Smidgens, But Hold the Meat", New York Times, September 7, 1994

Backed by soaring sax and energetic percussion, Martin makes the sort of celebratory, Spanish party music redolent of warm weather and cocktails.
-- Lisa Verrico, Times (London), November 10, 2000

It's a fine word, "Fellowship", redolent of Oxbridge high tables and intellectual excellence.
-- Paul Hoggart, Times (London), February 24, 2001

Redolent derives from Latin redolens, -entis, present participle of redolere, "to emit a scent, to diffuse an odor," from red-, re- + olere, "to exhale an odor."