otiose : Ineffective; futile.
Changing the windshield wipers on Danielle’s Keys Cruiser was at best an otiose gesture, as the windscreen itself was cracked in so many places that both passenger and driver usually had to stick their heads out the side windows to see where they were going.
quondam : former, sometime
Norton, a quondam vibraslap virtuoso sidelined by a tragic wrist injury, practiced for months to get back into playing form enough to join his nephew’s Ozzy Osbourne tribute band “Crazy Train”.
gormandizing : to eat greedily or ravenously
Most of the ducks in the park were going hungry thanks to the aggressive tactics of a gormandizing goose that pushed the mallards out of the way and snapped breadcrumbs out of the hands of children.
galactophagist : milk drinker
Cookie Monster’s fame may have inspired a galactophagist puppet that never made it into production due to a lactose intolerant Muppeteer.
nugiperous: given to inventing trifles
Irene was the scourge of the rest home’s cribbage tables; she laughed in the faces of those she had beaten, and when she herself lost, she was often nugiperous, blaming her plight on everything from wearing the wrong prescription eyeglasses to have a bad horoscope for the day.
ostrobogulous: slightly risqué or indecent
Fran’s memories of the bachelorette party were hazy at best but her friends were able to remind her via a series of ostrobogulous cell-phone pictures taken of her in various states of inhibition.
maquillage : Makeup or cosmetics.
For this year’s Halloween costume, Hans decided to go with a mash-up combining Richard Simmons’ signature workout apparel with the maquillage of the KISS member with the same surname.
spavined: old and decrepit : over-the-hill
Garret taught Driver’s Ed with the aid of Lucille, a spavined Keys Cruiser so rusted out that he could use the hole in the passenger-side floorboards as a Fred Flinstone-style emergency break should one of his students fail to yield at an intersection.
epigone: follower, disciple
Many laughed at the bathing suit-clad group flailing about on the grass at the park but before the day was over, the fringe sport of synchronized air-swimming had a few new epigones.
apolaustic: self-indulgent; devoted to seeking enjoyment
Scattered applause wakened me and I realized that I had nodded off sometime during the apolaustic bandleader’s seven minute long banjo solo in the middle of their rendition of “Hooked on a Feeling”.
divagate: to wander or stray from a course or subject : digress
Not wanting to leave enough time for a quiz at the end of the lecture, Professor Srobitol’s students asked questions about birdwatching in the hopes that he would divagate from the top of supply-side economics and instead talk to them about the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow.