distrait \dis-TRAY\, adjective:
Divided or withdrawn in attention, especially because of anxiety.

Yet when she stopped for a cup of coffee, finding herself too distrait to begin work, the picture was in the course of being removed from the window.
-- Anita Brookner, Falling Slowly

He had painfully written out a first draft, and he intoned it now like a poet delicate and distrait.
-- Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

Virtually nobody noticed a more private and simultaneous cameo in a little bay in West Cork: of a delicate, somewhat distrait, gentleman of middle age being swept into the turbulent waters off Kilcrohane.
-- Kevin Myers, "An Irishman's Diary", Irish Times, July 21, 1999

Distrait is from Old French, from distraire, "to distract," from Latin distrahere, "to pull apart; to draw away; to distract," from dis- + trahere, "to draw, to pull." It is related to distraught and distracted, which have the same Latin source.

salient \SAY-lee-unt; SAYL-yunt\, adjective:
1. Shooting out or up; projecting.
2. Forcing itself on the attention; prominent; conspicuous; noticeable.
3. Leaping; springing; jumping.

noun:
1. An outwardly projecting part of a fortification, trench system, or line of defense.
2. A projecting angle or part.

What I had in mind was an autobiography in which, while treating my person with due reverence, I would present a firsthand account of recent events in Europe that put me in the running for both the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Nobel Peace Prize (to acquaint you right away with one of my salient characteristics: megalomania).
-- Thomas Brussig, Heroes Like Us, Translated by John Brownjohn

He gave science an exciting, positive image when many Americans were skeptical of it, worried that its most salient effect was to disenchant the universe and undercut religion.
-- David A. Hollinger, "Star Power", New York Times, November 28, 1999

The strength of the hypothesis is that it simultaneously explains all these salient features, none of which had satisfactory independent explanations.
-- Paul F. Hoffman and Daniel P. Schrag, "Snowball Earth", Scientific American, January 2000

He was killed during an attack on German positions dug into Ploegsteert Wood on the Ypres salient.
-- Russell Jenkins and Stephen Farrell, "Search begins for family of Flanders fusilier", Times (London), January 10, 2000

Salient derives from the present participle of Latin salire, to leap. Other words deriving from salire are sally, to leap forth or rush out suddenly; and perhaps salmon, the "leaping" fish.

brackish \BRAK-ish\, adjective:
1. Somewhat salty.
2. Distasteful; unpalatable.

Just a few villages dot the dangerous beaches where the Sepik [River] meets the sea, a brackish zone where sharks and saltwater crocodiles lurk.
-- Dennis Lewon, "Learning to Receive", Islands

I gagged, and tasted something metallic and brackish in the back of my throat.
-- Lance Armstrong and Sally Jenkins, It's Not About the Bike

And yet his decision still leaves that brackish aftertaste.
-- Tom Block, review of The Sorrow and the Pity (1971), Culturevulture.net

Brackish derives from Dutch brak, "salty." It is especially used to describe a mixture of seawater and fresh water.

nonage \NON-ij; NOH-nij\, noun:
1. The time of life before a person becomes legally of age.
2. A period of youth or immaturity.

He was an adept in politics, even in his nonage, and an accomplished statesman before the laws regarded him as a man.
-- Anne Hamilton, The Epics of the Ton

In these journals of Thoreau's nonage, now restored to us in their full text for the first time, we walk among the young Thoreau's thoughts much more often than in the fields and woods surrounding Concord.
-- Leon Edel, "The Very Young Thoreau", New York Times, December 20, 1981

It occasionally puts children over men, and the conceits of nonage over wisdom and experience.
-- Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man

Nonage comes from non- (from Latin) + age, from Old French aage, eage, from Latin aetas, "age."

gallimaufry \gal-uh-MAW-free\, noun:
A medley; a hodgepodge.

Today bilingual programs are conducted in a gallimaufry of around 80 tongues, ranging from Spanish to Lithuanian to Micronesian Yapese.
-- Ezra Bowen, "For Learning or Ethnic Pride?", Time, July 8, 1985

Then the speech itself, and you have to feel sorry for TQMEM [The Queen's Most Excellent Majesty] having to read out this frightful drivel, this grim gallimaufry of cliches, jargon and outright lies.
-- Simon Hoggart, "Grand tradition: Maltravers, Rouge, Garter, Skinner", The Guardian, November 27, 2003

Maran reports the daily jostlings and thrivings in a public school with 3,200 students, 185 teachers, 45 languages, a principal and five vice principals, five safety monitors, 62 sports teams and a gallimaufry of alternative programs, clubs and cliques.
-- Colman McCarthy, "A Writer Goes Back to School", Washington Post, August 20, 2001

Gallimaufry, originally meaning "a hash of various kinds of meats," comes from French galimafrée, from Old French, from galer, "to rejoice, to make merry" (source of English gala) + mafrer, "to eat much," from Medieval Dutch maffelen, "to open one's mouth wide."