embonpoint \ahn-bohn-PWAN\, noun:
Plumpness of person; stoutness.

With his embonpoint, Mr Soames appears to be wearing a quadruple-breasted suit.
-- Simon Hoggart, "Roll up, roll up, to explore the Soames Zone", The Guardian, February 1, 2000

His embonpoint expands by the day and his eyes are buried in the fat of his cheeks.
-- quoted in Goethe: The Poet and the Age: Revolution and Renunciation by Nicholas Boyle

Embonpoint is from French, literally "in good condition" (en, "in" + bon, "good" + point, "situation, condition").

recreant \REK-ree-uhnt\, adjective:
1. Cowardly; craven.
2. Unfaithful; disloyal.

noun:
1. A coward.
2. An unfaithful or disloyal person.

His recreant companion disappears around the fence, but he remains, smiling affably.
-- Eric J. Segal, "Norman Rockwell and the fashioning of American masculinity", Art Bulletin, December 1, 1996

To any man there may come at times a consciousness that there blows, through all the articulations of his body, the wind of a spirit not wholly his; that his mind rebels; that another girds him and carries him whither he would not. . . . The open door was closed in his recreant face.
-- Genie Babb, "Where the bodies are buried", Narrative, October 1, 2002

Wordsworth compares himself to a truant, a false steward, a recreant, when he does not write poetry, when poetic numbers fail to come spontaneously, when his harp is defrauded and the singer ends in silence.
-- J. Douglas Kneale, "Majestic Indolence: English Romantic Poetry and the Work of Art", Criticism, September 22, 1996

And it appears in the way the review essay was set up: Aronson versus Miliband, the recreant versus the faithful one.
-- Ronald Aronson, "Response to Victor Wallis", Monthly Review, October 1, 1996

But was it worth surrendering your religion, hence your honor, and becoming a recreant?
-- Eugen Weber, "The Ups and Downs of Honor", American Scholar, January 1, 1999

Recreant comes from Old French, from the present participle of recroire, "to yield in a trial by battle," from re-, "re-" + croire, "to believe," from Latin credere.

supernal \soo-PUR-nuhl\, adjective:
1. Being in or coming from the heavens or a higher place or region.
2. Relating or belonging to things above; celestial; heavenly.
3. Lofty; of surpassing excellence.

In 1616, a pope and a cardinal inquisitor reprimanded Galileo, warning him to curtail his forays into the supernal realms.
-- Dava Sobel, Galileo's Daughter

Liu Mengmei has more to worry about from earthly authorities who would behead him for plundering tombs than from any supernal force.
-- Edward Rothstein, "Even for Death's Escapees, the Myth Says, There Are Rules", New York Times, July 24, 1999

Then comes what may be the most supernal sequence in all opera -- the Countess' lament in "Dove sono" and the letter duet, with only the tiniest interruption in the middle as the Count and Antonio cross the stage plotting to snare Cherubino.
-- "In Review: From Around the World", Opera News, May 1999

Supernal derives from Latin supernus, "above, upper, top, hence celestial," from super, "over, above."

gravitas \GRAV-uh-tahs\, noun:
High seriousness (as in a person's bearing or in the treatment of a subject).

At first sight the tall, stooped figure with the hawk-like features and bloodless cheeks, the look of extreme gravitas, seems forbidding and austere, the abbot of an ascetic order, scion of an imperial family who has foresworn the world.
-- John Lehmann, "T.S. Eliot Talks About Himself and the Drive to Create", New York Times, November 9, 1953

And we want to tell our readers about sharp, clever books, utterly lacking in gravitas, that we know will delight them on the beach or the bus.
-- Benjamin Schwarz, "(Some of) the best books of 2001", The Atlantic, December 2001

Gravitas is from the Latin gravitas, "heaviness, seriousness," from gravis, "heavy, serious."

effrontery \ih-FRUN-tuh-ree\, noun:
Insulting presumptuousness; shameless boldness; insolence.

Who would have the effrontery to treat the chairman in this way?
-- Tom King, The Operator

Passionately she sang of Yoshitsune, her love and yearning for him, and her joy that he had successfully managed to evade his evil half-brother Yoritomo. Yoritomo was torn between rage at such effrontery and pleasure at the exquisite beauty of her voice.
-- Lesley Downer, Women of the Pleasure Quarters

Effrontery is from French effronterie, ultimately from Late Latin effrons, effront-, "shameless," literally "without forehead" (to blush with), from Latin ex-, "out of" + frons, front-, "forehead."

indurate \IN-dur-it; -dyur-\, adjective:
1. Physically or morally hardened; unfeeling; stubborn.

transitive verb:
1. To make hard; to harden.
2. To harden against; to make hardy; to habituate.
3. To make hardened; to make callous or stubborn.
4. To establish; to fix firmly.

intransitive verb:
1. To grow hard; to harden.
2. To become established or fixed.

They are completely indurate. They aren't hard-nosed; they live without any sense of malice. There is no time or need for others.
-- John Stone, "Evil in the Early Cinema of Oliver Stone", Journal of Popular Film and Television, Summer 2000

First off, the avoid-terminal-prepositions rule is the invention of one Fr. R. Lowth, an eighteenth-century British preacher and indurate pedant who did things like spend scores of pages arguing for hath over the trendy and degenerate has.
-- David Foster Wallace, "Tense Present", Harper's Magazine, April 2001

New findings in science point toward a buoyant view of our being: one in which life is favored, not improbable, and the universe a welcoming place, not an indurate domain.
-- Gregg Easterbrook, "Science sees the light", New Republic, October 12, 1998

Only an exceptionally strong personality or a criminal indurated by bitter experience can withstand prolonged, skillful interrogation in silence.
-- Charles E. O'Hara and Gregory L. O'Hara, Fundamentals of Criminal Investigation

The terrain he walked over still looked like sand, but the sand was cemented together, firm as concrete. Indurated soil.
-- Geoffrey A. Landis, Mars Crossing

But "hard cheeses indurate, soft cheeses collapse." (Flaubert's Parrot). People don't change, they set in.
-- Antonia Quirke, "Jack of all trades", New Statesman, October 29, 2001

Indurate is derived from the past participle of Latin indurare, from in-, intensive prefix + durare, "to harden," from durus, "hard."