I'll have a sipe more of coffee, but if I eat another bite, I'll busticate. Ivan Doig, This House of Sky, 1978
"Elephants really busticate trees," said Brendan Washington-Jones. Lawrence Anthony, The Last Rhinos, 2012
... the theme of every evening's conversation at the different houses, and in our afternoon's paseo upon the beach, was the ship ... Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast, 1840
For the last two days in Ibarra, the foreigner has enjoyed easygoing Latina hospitality: a tour of the market where Celia's mother has a stall; a paseo to a small village hosting a bullfight, even the funeral of a family friend. Kelley Aitken, "Eating Cuy," Love in a Warm Climate, 1998
"Hum!" cried the old gentleman, consulting a watch he carried. "I think we are twenty minutes behindhand." Horatio Alger, Randy of the River, 1906
I was going to pop in to see if Miss Harner was O.K., but I was a bit behindhand after collecting some flowerpots and a bucket and that what had been blown into our hedge. Miss Read, Gossip from Thrush Green, 1981
A few miles away bare scree-covered slopes protruded from the gnarled krummholz, marking the trail's maximum height. Annie Proulx, "Testimony of the Donkey," Fine Just the Way It Is, 2008
I should point out that nowhere are the wabi and sabi palettes of time acting on nature more visible than in the krummholz--the "elfin timber," gnarled and twisted little trees at treeline that might be a thousand years old ... Dan Simmons, “Introduction to ‘Looking for Kelly Dahl,’” Worlds Enough & Time, 2002
The word “Hoosier,” which today is the demonym used to describe people from the state of Indiana, is a mystery nearing its second century. It is one of the best-known irregular demonyms for American states, along with “Yankee,” referring to someone from New York (and sometimes expanded from that into the entire Northeast), and “Buckeye,” which refers to someone from Ohio. Dan Nosowitz, "The Unsolvable Mystery of the Word 'Hoosier'," Atlas Obscura, August 22, 2017
Shafik turns his thoughts back to the archaic demonym, Shawam, singular Shami, which is what the native Egyptians called people from a certain part of the Fertile Crescent. Alain Farah, "Life of the Father," Granta, 141: Canada, November 9, 2017
God, it seems like I'll always have a Minerva by my side being a better person than I am. Julia Alvarez, In the Time of the Butterflies, 1994
The notion of such a Minerva as this, whom I saw in public places now and then, surrounded by swarms of needy abbés and schoolmasters, who flattered her, frightened me for some time, and I had not the least desire to make her acquaintance. William Makepeace Thackeray, "The Luck of Barry Lyndon: A Romance of the Last Century," Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country, Volume XXX, July to December, 1844
Beyond that, the continued association of pregnancy with sickness perpetuates the benighted notion of childbearing as a threat to ordinary human experience when many would argue that it is the singular manifestation of it. Ginia Bellafante, "Paid Parental Leave, Except for Most Who Need It," New York Times, December 1, 2017
... it is difficult to have a reasonable conversation with someone who makes no secret about the fact that he thinks you are both benighted and stupid. Bruce Franzese, "The Conversation," The Atlantic, November 2017