physiognomy \fiz-ee-OG-nuh-mee; -ON-uh-mee\, noun:
1. The art of discovering temperament and other characteristic qualities of the mind from the outward appearance, especially by the features of the face.
2. The face or facial features, especially when regarded as indicating character.
3. The general appearance or aspect of a thing.

According to the latest rumours, he is now immersed in the science of physiognomy, the divining of a person's character by the shape of their features, and is preparing a paper on the subject for the inaugural meeting of the Van Diemen's Land Scientific Society.
-- Tom Gilling, The Sooterkin

Pasteur seems to have been most interested in capturing the actual looks of his subjects, and his portraits form a gallery showing all kinds of physiognomies that are observed with almost clinical patience.
-- Patrice Debré, Louis Pasteur (translated by Elborg Forster)

Over my crib hung a piece of tin embossed with the stern physiognomies of Vladimir Ilich Lenin and Leon Trotsky.
-- William Herrick, Jumping the Line

It was an urban physiognomy different, Bourget thought, "from every other since the foundation of the world," an unvarying flatland of industrial neighborhoods that rolled on -- backward from the horizon -- for miles and miles until it climaxed in a silhouette of towers tightly wedged between river, rail lines, and lake.
-- Donald L. Miller, City of the Century

Physiognomy comes from Greek physiognomonia, from physiognomon, "judging character by the features," from physis, "nature, physique, appearance" + gnomon, "one who knows, hence an examiner, a judge," from gignoskein, "to know."



pronunciamento \pro-nun-see-uh-MEN-toe\, noun:
1. A proclamation or manifesto; a formal announcement or declaration.
2. A pronouncement.

This was, then, not merely the official closing statement of a lost war, but the opening pronunciamento of an urgent campaign to maintain imperial control as well as social and political stability in a shattered nation.
-- John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

The general secretary issued a pronunciamento, in which traditional clotted cliches somehow turned into a kind of poetry, both majestic and absurd.
-- Peter Simple, "Comment: Lost", Daily Telegraph, September 10, 1999

It was said of her, by a man given to such pronunciamentos, that " in conversation she had more wit than any other person, male or female."
-- Jonathan Yardley, "Ladies of the Grand Tour", Washington Post, December 16, 2001

Pronunciamento comes from Spanish pronunciamiento, from pronunciar, "to pronounce," from Latin pronuntiare, from pro-, "forth" + nuntiare, "to announce," from nuntius, "messenger."




noisome \NOY-sum\, adjective:
1. Noxious; harmful; unwholesome.
2. Offensive to the smell or other senses; disgusting.

The body politic produces noisome and unseemly substances, among which are politicians.
-- P. J. O'Rourke, "No Apparent Motive", The Atlantic, November 2002

The first flower to bloom in this latitude, when the winter frost loosens its grip upon the sod, is not the fragrant arbutus, nor the delicate hepatica, nor the waxen bloodroot, as the poets would have us think, but the gross, uncouth, and noisome skunk cabbage.
-- Alvan F. Sanborn, "New York After Paris", The Atlantic, October 1906

The most dangerous season was after the rice and indigo harvests in August and September when the waters were 'low, stagnant and corrupt' and the air made noisome with indigo plants hauled out of the water and left to rot in the fields.
-- Ronald Rees, "Under the weather: climate and disease, 1700-1900", History Today, January 1996

Noisome is from Middle English noysome, from noy, "harm," short for anoy, from Old French, from anoier, "to annoy."



doff \DOF\, transitive verb:
1. To take off, as an article of clothing.
2. To tip or remove (one's hat).
3. To put aside; to rid oneself of.

After I finished sweeping, I grabbed my check, went to the locker room, and doffed the monkey suit, slipped into my jeans, sneakers and T-shirt and broke camp.
-- Reginald McKnight, White Boys: Stories

Any moment now and Max Linder would ride out from around the corner on a pair of white horses, fire blanks at a passing beauty, and doff his top hat to hide his face from the policeman.
-- Nina Berberova, The Book of Happiness

Benny doffed his cap grandly.
-- Thomas Maier, Dr. Spock: An American Life

And he became as a pillar of fire to superannuated peoples who had but to doff the lethargy of custom to find themselves young.
-- J. F. A. Pyre, "Byron in Our Day", The Atlantic, April 1907

Doff Middle English doffen, from don off, "to do off," from don, "to do" + off, "off."


supervene \soo-pur-VEEN\, intransitive verb:
1. To take place or occur as something additional, extraneous, or unexpected (sometimes followed by 'on' or 'upon').
2. To follow immediately after; to ensue.

After all, doctors outside the hospital can pick up the pieces and readmission is always possible, provided death doesn't supervene.
-- Theodore Dalrymple, "How to win a million pounds", New Statesman, April 7, 2003

Sympathy will weaken; the anger of American public opinion will be uncontainable; doubt -- and the usual conflict of differing interests -- will supervene.
-- "The terrible swift sword", Daily Telegraph, September 13, 2001

We must recognize that it is often unwise to change procedures long in place, lest unintended adverse consequences supervene.
-- William Anderson, "It Is Ended", Weekly Standard, March 31, 2005

Perhaps it was inevitable that, after the magical extravaganza of the Eighties, a day-after-the-feast mood should supervene.
-- Robert McCrum, "The Booker", The Observer, September 26, 1999

Supervene comes from Latin supervenire, from super-, "over, above" + venire, "to come."



bouleversement \bool-vair-suh-MAWN\, noun:
Complete overthrow; a reversal; a turning upside down.

For the second time in his life Amory had had a complete bouleversement and was hurrying into line with his generation.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

Ian Salisbury had his chance yesterday but he tried too hard to give the ball a rip on the dry surface and the old tendency to drop short or overpitch cost 34 from eight overs either side of tea as Rhodes and McMillan threatened a bouleversement worthy of the famous England deliverance against Australia in 1981.
-- Christopher Martin-Jenkins, "Gough takes England to brink", Daily Telegraph, August 10, 1998

It requires a complete bouleversement in your whole attitude, a process of adjustment that anyone who's been in this position understands; but you need to go through it.
-- "Two years' hard Labour", Independent, July 13, 1996

Bouleversement comes from French, from Old French bouleverser, "to overturn," from boule, "ball" (from Latin bulla) + verser, "to overturn" (from Latin versare, from vertere, "to turn").




precipice \PRES-uh-pis\, noun:
1. A very steep, perpendicular, or overhanging place; a cliff.
2. The brink of a hazardous situation.

Barbara got as close to the edge as she dared and looked down over the precipice.
-- Catherine Whitney, The Calling: The Year in the Life of an Order of Nuns

And then, just like that, there you were, on the edge of the precipice, with everything spread out underneath: the valley, and then, twenty miles off, the shimmering, spangling City.
-- James Kaplan, Two Guys from Verona: A Novel of Suburbia

Mugabe's latest retreat to reason from the precipice of anarchy may have come too late, at least for him.
-- Simon Robinson, "Power to the Mob", Time Europe, May 1, 2000

At that point, no other publication in the world had the technical capability, the organizational latitude, or the raw nerve to operate on the very precipice of disaster the way that Sports Illustrated regularly did.
-- Michael MacCambridge, The Franchise:A History of Sports Illustrated Magazine

Precipice comes from Latin praecipitium, "a precipice," from praeceps, praecipit-, "with head before, headlong, steep," from prae, "before" + caput, "the head."



potboiler \POT-boi-lur\, noun:
A usually inferior literary or artistic work, produced quickly for the purpose of making money.

The play was a mixed blessing. Through it O'Neill latched on to a perennial source of income, but the promise of his youth was essentially squandered on a potboiler.
-- Jane Scovell, Oona. Living in the Shadows

If reading and travel are two of life's most rewarding experiences, to combine them is heavenly. I don't mean sitting on a beach reading the latest potboiler, a fine form of relaxation but not exactly mind-expanding.
-- Stephen Kinzer, "Traveling Companions", New York Times, April 19, 1998

Potboiler comes from the phrase "boil the pot," meaning "to provide one's livelihood."



ne plus ultra \nee-plus-UL-truh; nay-\, noun:
1. The highest point, as of excellence or achievement; the acme; the pinnacle; the ultimate.
2. The most profound degree of a quality or condition.

He also penned a number of supposedly moral and improving books which . . . were the very ne plus ultra of tedium.
-- Richard West, "A life fuller than fiction", Irish Times, August 9, 1997

If you were a graduate student in the 80's and subject to the general delusion that held literary criticism to be the ne plus ultra of intellectual thrill, then you too probably owned one of these: an oversize paperback with an austere cover and small-type title that, grouped with three or more of its kind on your bookshelf, confirmed your status as an avatar of predoctoral chic.
-- Judith Shulevitz, "Correction Appended", New York Times, October 29, 1995

Ne plus ultra is from Latin, literally, "(go) no more beyond", from ne, "not" + plus, "more" + ultra, "beyond."



turpitude \TUR-puh-tood; -tyood\, noun:
1. Inherent baseness or vileness of principle, words, or actions; depravity.
2. A base act.

In the eyes of the far left, it [the 60s] is the era when revolution was at hand, only to be betrayed by the feebleness of the faithful and the trickery of the enemy; to the radical right, an era of subversion and moral turpitude.
-- Arthur Marwick, The Sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, c.1958-c.1974

They based their action on a clause in the uniform player contract which says players must "conform to standards of good citizenship and good moral character" and disallows "engaging in acts of moral turpitude."
-- Ira Berkow, "Go Ahead, Choke the Boss -- Only in the N.B.A.", New York Times, March 5, 1998

They were not his misdeeds, his turpitudes; she accused him of nothing--that is, of but one thing, which was not a crime.
-- Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

Turpitude comes from Latin turpitudo, from turpis, "foul, base."



roue \roo-AY\, noun:
A man devoted to a life of sensual pleasure; a debauchee; a rake.

I spent some time with Desmond, an old roue who was recovering from a lifetime of excesses in a village near Fontainebleau.
-- Roger Scruton, "Purely medicinal", New Statesman, October 15, 2001

She caught the eye of New York aristocrat Gouverneur Morris, ex-U.S. Minister to France, a one-legged cosmopolitan roue. (Rumor had it that a jealous husband had shot Morris's leg off.)
-- Bill Kauffman, "Unwise Passions", American Enterprise, January 2001

Yet he acted the roue to the end, carrying on an intimate liaison with a girl who worked at the asylum -- he was 74, she was 17.
-- Rex Roberts, "Write Stuff", Insight on the News, December 11, 2000

Roue comes from French, from the past participle of rouer, "to break upon the wheel" (from the feeling that a roue deserves such a punishment), ultimately from Latin rota, "wheel."