S

SALTARELLO :  noun  a lively dance duet with much leaping and skipping. See PATIBULARY

SECOTINE :  noun  an organic compound; adj having a gap in a ring. Compare PENANNULAR, adj. See PATIBULARY

SLABBERDEGULLION, SLUBBERDEGULLION :  noun  a slobberer, a sloppy person. See DRUGGEL, LOOBY

SEPTENTRIONAL :  adj  Latin for "seven oxen," referring to the Big Dipper; thus, northern. Compare TRAMONTANA, BOREAL

. . . Well, no, we are all septentrional here, all a bit cool.

--Burgess, Earthly Powers, p. 159.

SIBYLLINE :  adj  acting or speaking as one of the ancient prophetesses; occult, mysterious. See also ABREACTION, WHELM

She hesitated a moment, as if she knew she was being too cool and sibylline.

--Fowles, "The Ebony Tower,"
The Ebony Tower, p. 9

SNY :  noun  a curve upward as in the planking of a ship toward the bow. See AKROPOSTHION. Compare EPINASTIC

SPINTRY :  noun  a species of male prostitute

. . . zimmed† and clean-shaven spintries -- shoking as parrots . . . .

--Gardner, Jason and Medeia, p. 9

SQUINNY :  noun  "a squinty look, a peering" (Davenport). See also MUCIN

I would get a good squinny at them as they trod past. . . .

--Davenport, "The Trees at Lystra," Eclogues, p. 4.

STEGOCEPHALIC :  adj  having a covered head, capped. Compare AKROPOSTHION, CARDIOID

One munches an apple, one buzzes his lips like a hornet, the third twiddles the radical of his stegocephalic posthion.†

--Davenport, "The Death of Picasso," Eclogues, p. 26.

STRABISMUS :  noun  condition of being cross-eyed. STRABISMIC, adj. See also VENEREAN

. . . small strabismus, a half-squint--the sort of thing which would force one to become a sort of self-deprecationg type of humorist.

--Durrell, Monsieur, p. 290.

The dark-ringed eyes of her breasts ogled him, eyes capable of independent motion, like the eyes of some stabismic Mack Sennett comedian. . . .

--Burgess, Honey for the Bears, p. 144.

SUPERCALENDER :  verb  to run through rollers in order to make smooth, emboss, or make thin. See PRAT

SWINK :  verb  to work hard, labor, toil and moil. SWINKING, adj. See COG

SYLLEPSIS :  noun  a rhetorical device in which a word yokes two constructions--each with a different meaning

". . .--because I can't see through Adlai. Nor can most Democrats. . . "
"You've `committed,´ as you put it, a zeugma†--or more properly, a syllepsis."

--Buckley, Stained Glass, p. 30.

EXAMPLES OF SYLLEPSIS

My objectivity was peeled off with her chemise and tossed unwanted into a corner.

--Barth, The Floating Opera, p. 121.

And I was too full of gin and Jane to do much besides stare at the chicken breasts and hers.

--Barth, The Floating Opera, p. 25.

He has removed neither his cap nor thuggish sneer.

--Koster, Mandragon, p. 24.

SYNCOPE :  noun  a stopping of the heart beat, a faint, a swoon

. . . as the real De Quincey (that mere drug friend . . . ) imagined the murder of Duncan and the others insulated self-withdrawn into a deep syncope and suspension of earthly passion.

--Lowry, Under the Volcano, p. 136.

"Oh, they didn't go to sleep, quelle idée, they swoon, it's a little syncope."

--Nabokov, Ada, p. 54.