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umbrage

Definition:

a feeling of anger caused by being offended

Context (p20):

and at the same time he observed an increased blandness in Muldoon’s features indicating that he, too, had noted it and was prepared to take umbrage

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erudite

Definition:

having or showing profound knowledge

I lost the context, but noted that it was “regarding knowledge”

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stochastic

Definition:

being or having a random variable

Also lost context on this one, but it was regarding a “generated pattern”

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asperity

Definition:

something hard to endure

Context (p26):

Regarding the president chastising the VP for saying “WOP”:

He spoke with some asperity, since he lived daily with the dread that someday the secret tapes he kept of all Oval Room transactions would be released to the public.

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mendacious

Definition:

given to lying

I think of “mentir”, Spanish for “to lie”

Context (p?):

In this moment, now, as I tighten the trigger, the tyrant dies, and with him all the lies of a cruel, mendacious epoch.

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pons asinorum

Definition:

latin for “bridge of asses”

See Pons Asinorum on Wikipedia for a way better explanation.

Context (p100):

(Didn’t record it)

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satrap

Definition (from Princeton Wordnet):

a governor of a province in ancient Persia

A perhaps more apt definition for context below (from classics technology center):

a Persian title that literally means “protector of power”; satraps were essentially administrative governors, ruling a satrapy

Context (p345):

He was an old man, and he was tired of being their servant, or satrap, or satellite

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rictus

Definition:

a gaping grimace

Context:

and he begins to grin a rictus not of omnipotence such as he had expected but of something different and unexpected and therefore better – omniscience

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aphorism

Definition:

a short pithy instructive saying

Context (p386):

“You might say, ” Moon’s voice betraid pride in the aphorism he was about to unleash, “mankind is a stautory ape.”