WORD OF THE DAY..........courtesy of Dictionary.com

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cumulus \KYOO-myuh-luhs\, noun:

1. A heap; pile.
2. A cloud of a class characterized by dense individual elements in the form of puffs, mounds, or towers, with flat bases and tops that often resemble cauliflower.

He was organizing the year's remnants. He was logging and archiving and filing it all. The whole swollen yearlong cumulus.
-- Dana Spiotta, Stone Arabia

"So where is it at, Minogue," asks the palatal man, aloft in a cumulus of webs and dust and creak.
-- David Foster Wallace, Girl with Curious Hair

umulus stems from the Neo-Latin word meaning "heap, pile." It was first used to describe clouds in the early 1800s.

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chrestomathy \kres-TOM-uh-thee\, noun:

A collection of selected literary passages.

I had learned to read Sanscrit and to translate easy passages in the chrestomathy, and devoted myself with special zeal to the study of the Latin grammar and prosody.
-- Georg Ebers, The Story of My Life from Childhood to Manhood

This little chrestomathy preserves almost the only words of Atticus to have survived from antiquity.
-- Peter White, Cicero in Letters

Chrestomathy literally means "useful to learn" in Greek, from the roots chres- meaning "to use" and math- meaning "to learn."

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demiurge \DEM-ee-urj\, noun:

1. Philosophy. A. Platonism. The artificer of the world. B. (In the Gnostic and certain other systems) a supernatural being imagined as creating or fashioning the world in subordination to the Supreme Being, and sometimes regarded as the originator of evil.
2. (In many states of ancient Greece) a public official or magistrate.


Larger than a character, the river is a manifest presence, a demiurge to support the man and the boy, a deity to betray them, feed them, all but drown them, fling them apart, float them back together.
-- Norman Mailer, The Spooky Art

The gnostics think this world was created by a bad god—a demiurge—who wandered too far from the True God and somehow got perverted.
-- Derek Swannson, Crash Gordon and the Mysteries of Kingsburg

Demiurge meant "a worker for the people" in Ancient Greek, from the roots dḗmio- meaning "of the people" and -ergos, "a worker."

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ingeminate \in-JEM-uh-neyt\, verb:

To repeat; reiterate.

Sitting among his friends, often, after a deep silence and frequent sighs, he would with a shrill and sad accent ingeminate the word Peace, Peace...
-- Christopher Ricks, Essays in Appreciation

Mr. Dott's spirits were a little dashed, especially as Niven with a fateful countenance continued to ingeminate the word “Hungrygrain.”
-- Arthur Train, Tutt and Mr. Tutt

Ingeminate comes from the Latin word ingemināre which meant "to repeat or redouble."

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betide \bih-TAHYD\, verb:

1. To happen to; come to; befall.
2. To happen; come to pass.

"Ill luck betide thee, poor damsel," said Sancho, "ill luck betide thee!"
-- Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

"The girls' skirts are measured each week with a dressmaker's rule," she would say, "to see that they conform to the length prescribed. Woe betide any girl whose skirt does not."
-- Hilary Mantel, An Experiment in Love

Betide stems from the Old English word tide meaning "something that happened." As in besot and belabor, the prefix be- turns the noun into a verb.

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ventose \VEN-tohs\, adjective:

Given to empty talk; windy.

Anyhow, it is better to wind up that way than to go growling out one's existence as a ventose hypochondriac.
-- Thomas Henry Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley

The ventose orator was confounded, and put himself and his glass down together.
-- L. J. Bigelow, Bench and Bar

First used in English in the 1700s, ventose is derived from the Latin word for wind, "vent."

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varlet \VAHR-lit\, noun:

1. A knavish person; rascal.
2. A. An attendant or servant. B. A page who serves a knight.

Is he not a lying, stinking, contemptible varlet?
-- Jude Morgan, Indiscretion

A varlet scrambled forward at once and attempted to wrestle our luggage away from me.
-- Eric Kraft, On the Wing

Varlet is a variation on the French word valet.

[Front-Ranger]

I wonder if it evolved into varmint in the American West. 

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skirr \skur\, verb:

1. To go rapidly; fly; scurry.
2. To go rapidly over.

noun:
1. A grating or whirring sound.

Looking up, he perceived, to his horror, the figure of a man which seemed to skirr along the surface of the water...
-- Ambrose Marten, The Stanley Tales

If they'll do neither, we will come to them, and make them skirr away as swift as stones enforced from the old Assyrian slings.
-- William Shakespeare, Henry V

Skirr is related to the word scour, which comes from the Old Norse word skur meaning "shower."

 

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var·mint   /ˈvɑrmənt/ Show Spelled[vahr-muhnt] Show IPA
noun
1. Chiefly Southern and South Midland U.S. 
a. vermin.
b. an objectionable or undesirable animal, usually predatory, as a coyote or bobcat.
2. a despicable, obnoxious, or annoying person.
Also, var·ment.


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Origin:
1530–40; variant of vermin (with regular outcome of Middle English ĕr  before consonant ( compare argal3 , parson) and parasitic t )

Front Ranger--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------     
I wonder if it evolved into varmint in the American West?            
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This is what I found in regards to that being the possible variant of "varmint"  It seems rather related to me for sure.  An undesirable and unwanted thing or person.