Abacinate, v. To blind by holding hot metal before the eyes as in torture. Eyes burning as though an unseen enemy conspired with sand and sea to abacinate her for a crime, A. dove headfirst into the water, never thinking saltwater would exacerbate the searing torment that disturbed her sight.

Abevacuation, n. (1) A morbid evacuation, whether partial or excessive; (2) Evacuation through other than the normal organs. Once A. hit the icy water, blinded by pain, her body underwent a restorative abevacuation: all toxins and tension seemed released through her skin.

Accismus, n. A feigned refusal of something earnestly desired. She had finally found the sea after so long searching, and although her thirst was not yet sated, A.’s postabevacuative relief was so shudderingly profound that when a manatee approached, she rejected its offer of a glass of freshwater, with a polite accismus, before fainting and floating belly up.

Adosculation, n. (1) The fertilization of flowers by the falling of pollen on the stigmas; (2) A slipping or insertion of one part into a cavity in another. The manatee was actually not a manatee at all, but an agent of the enemy armada come to capture A.; however, before bringing her back to the enemy’s distant base, A.’s abductor had to revive her with forced adosculation, handling her with care, coaxing a tube between her parched lips, allowing potable water to flush her bone-dry mouth through a bota bag concealed in one of his fake flippers.

Aeromancy, n. The art of divination or augury by atmospheric phenomena; hence, a forecasting of the weather or of atmospheric changes. As though to protest her abduction, the natural world unleashed a terrible squall, and as A. regained consciousness among ferociously chopping surf and whirling sea-spouts, the manatee cursed his armada’s aeromancy division, which had divined easy seas and high skies in the day’s early cloudcover.

Affy, v. (1) To promise to give or take (any one) in marriage; (2) To trust; (3) To assert on one’s honor; declare solemnly. It was a terrible thing that then transpired to the manatee, for although he had just been promised an adequate dowry in exchange for his agreement to promptly affy his girlfriend, the manatee decided there and then, looking into A.’s disoriented eyes, that if he were to affy anyone, it would have to be the A. he held in his prosthetic flippers. 

Agrammatism, n. A form of aphasia characterized by inability to combine words into sentences grammatically. As A. steadily regained her bearing while the manatee fell deeper under the spell of A.’s charms, their respective impairments manifested an incomprehensible exchange of order-scrambled phrases, both of them apparently suffering from an agrammatism more lasting than the storm that had tapered into a light drizzle.

Ait, n. A little island, especially in inland waters. “Enough talk,” thought the manatee, and covering A.’s mouth with his own, he took them on a long underwater journey along the coastline to an inlet, skimming along the surface of a tranquil bay’s floor flouderlike, until they came to a wide river, which they followed upstream salmonlike, until they tread the solid land of a little ait, positioned right in the center of a circular lake like it were the bull’s eye of some aquatic dartboard.

Akasa, n. (1) The fifth element in addition to fire, water, earth, and air: generally translated by ether. It is the vehicle of sound; (2) The primary plastic matter, from which all things are evolved: the ether of space. It was here on this island that the enemy were mass-producing (and often inhaling) akasa, their secret weapon, a formless, vaporous, invisible gas that they would use to further their campaign against the forces from which A. was AWOL. 

Allison, n. The act of striking with violence upon or of. A. was on the lam, fleeing her duty as commander of a roving squadron of her enemy’s enemy, feeding an inexplicable craving to see the sea; all the fussing and fighting, the requisite allison of military strikes, repelled her from the battle, and unwittingly, straight into the clutches of the enemy’s ever-fighting fake flippers.

Anabasis, n. (1) A going up; an expedition up; a military advance; (2) The increase of a disease from its beginning to its climax. Rarely do steep climbs adversely affect A., yet the incline they hiked into the steamy clouds of the enemy’s evil little ait proved too much an anabasis for A., and she repeatedly sullied the trail with fits of (see the next definition). 

Anabole, n. An evacuation or ejection upward, as in vomiting or expectoration; a throwing up. A. was amazed, excitedly informing her captors that the bits of brown rice her anabole had yielded were from the last meal she shared with her enemy’s enemy, nearly a week earlier.

Appulse, n. (1) The approach of one heavenly body toward another or toward the meridian; (2) An approach or impact of one moving body toward or upon another: said especially of a ship. Night came, and as the shadow of the earth slipped across the moon’s badly pocked surface, the manatee, now out of disguise and looking really rather dashing, approached A. with caution, sat closely beside her, and apologized for his atypical appulse, all the while offering a swig from one of the detached flippers, now filled with wine.

Archeonomous, adj. Primitive in form or condition; ancient. Perhaps it was the wine, or his grammatically correct sweet-talking, but before long, A. believed the lunar eclipse was a message sent from the natural world, one which meant that she and the really rather dashing former manatee should rely on the basic instincts of the species and try to outdo the beauty of the slow and easeful coupling of the moonglow and earthshadow in the nightsky: ever since archeonomous times, such acts of passion, on such nights, were unavoidable

Artolatry, n. The worship of bread. And in the morning, her captors fed A. a sesame-seed encrusted bagel, and she imitated her captors as they prayed to the bagel as though it were a holy crown, and once biting into the bagel, she knew deep within that she was converted by her (former) enemy’s artolatry. 

Ascham, n. A small cupboard or receptacle for keeping implements of archery. The bagel was the last straw, for ever since her capture, it was as though some blushing naked kid had removed arrows and bow from an ascham, and fired shots of adoration and love repeatedly through A.’s mind, body, and soul: basically, she was swooning, smitten with her manatee, the ait, the artolatry, not to mention the archeonomous acts.

Atremia, n. A hysterical condition in which there is inability to walk or stand upright, while voluntary motion is unimpaired. As they continued the anabasis, A. was so overcome her body mimicked symptoms of atremia so precisely that they had to drag her along the steep incline, and although she insisted that she could walk, at times when they released their support, she fell flat faced into the muddy trail.

Attuition, n. An act or faculty of the mind by which sensations are projected into space in the form of real objects. A. was worshipping bagels, consensually copulating with abductors once disguised as manatees, getting dragged up the slope of steamy mountainsides, that is, until her mind, overflowing with the ecstatic whirl of the proceedings and the slow heavenward bump and drag along the trail, spilled an impediment into the visible world, halting their procession as they gawked at the (see next definition) when it suddenly materialized thanks to A.’s attuition.

Aullay, n. An imaginary giant horse with a trunk resembling an elephant’s. It was there in front of them, a figment jostled loose from A.’s overburdened, much-too-bumped  imagination: a great stallion, pounding the precipitous path into a plateau with A-shaped horseshoed hooves, snorting with each inhale and releasing cannonshots from a scaly-gray trunk as long as an anaconda. 

Avourneen, n. Darling; sweetheart: a term of endearment among the peasantry. A.’s captor, the really rather dashing former manatee, whispered into her ear, calling her his sweet avourneen, before preparing for battle with the fierce aullay.

Axanthopsia, n. Color blindness in which there is insensibility to yellow. A. did not know that figments of imagination that slip from one’s mind into physical existence are subject to axanthopsia, and so, when the former manatee approached in his yellow rainslicker, with a spear in each hand ready to skewer this semi-equine roadblock through its gaping nostrils, the aullay saw nothing but an indistinguishably colored form approaching him, and since everyone else in the party wore colors other than yellow, the beast, distracted by the others’ bright clothing, took two fatal spears right up the trunk.

Axunge, n. The internal fat of the animal body; especially lard or goose-grease. One would think that the meat of an aullay would be too tough to do well when roasted on a spit, but there’s sufficient axunge so that the juiciest steaks are actually rather nicely marbled -- A., a strict vegetarian, looked on stricken as her fellow artolatrists sopped up steak gravy with their holy bread.

Ayrant, adj. Sitting on a nest. Finally, they reached the mountain’s summit, atop of which there was a tremendous nest (consisting of the trunks of archeonomous sequoias), upon which an eagle, proportional to the nest, sat ayrant.

Azzy, n. A wayward child. The eagle laid eggs filled with akasa, but it needed a sacrifice to produce more of it, and -- as you probably guessed -- A. was slated as the next eagle treat, but the former manatee, anticipating this moment, had dosed the aullay axunge with a sedative, so all in the group were snoring and drooling well before they could bind and marinate her in the eagle’s favorite honey-mustard sauce, and then A.’s former abductor/current rescuer conveyed a message to the eagle that it could gobble up as many of the sleeping men as it desired as long as it flew them back to the beach where they first met, and the eagle did this, and on that beach they rolled, they tumbled, and although many sensitive parts of them were seriously chafed from their shorebreak coupling, they managed to conceive a child (who had actually been conceived by adosculation when they first met), one who would become a notorious azzy, one who would disobey, one who would be what it would be, one whose tale would be told when we return next week, with definitions of twenty-something words beginning with the letter B.