Use More Words Part Deux

If you already knew these words: congratulations! You're better than I am.* 

perfidy (n): treachery, though it should mean the opposite - from the phrase per fidem decipere, "to deceive through trust" (the deceive/decipere part was left out of the final word, evidently)
Usage: "She is a woman - much woman. Should her perfidy be less than that of other women?"
found in The Conqueror

jerkwater (adj): contemptibly trivial. Originally described stops on a rural train line, where a train's small boiler had to be refilled often, requiring the crew to "jerk" or draw water from streams.  Also an indie band.
Usage: This jerkwater town doesn't even have an Olive Garden!
found in my new Penguin Classics Crossword Puzzles book**

imprecation (n): curse, malediction
Usage: "There came a whispered imprecation from above Paul and a low voice: 'Call me spawn of a lizard!'"
from Dune by Frank Herbert

garble (v): Okay I knew this one already, but doesn't this word sound like it should be onamatopoetic?  Apparently it originated in nautical trade, referring to the sifting of spices and then the mixing up of spices and then the mixing up of language.  

soupçon (n): small amount, hint, trace. From the French word for suspicion (Isn't that elegant?)
Usage: "Think of it as a real-life King Ralph mixed with a Shakespearean tragedy and a soupçon of Being There."
from Nathan Rabin's review of W. in My Year of Flops

epos (n): alternative word for the noun epic. It's still tied to the specific idea of a body of literature but I think it could have legs if it were tweaked to cover the general concept of "epic-ness" in that word's current usage.
Usage: "Theresa's passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self. She found her epos in the reform of a religious order."
from Middlemarch by George Eliot

jape (v): to joke, jest. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, jape "took on a slang sense mid-15c. of 'have sex with,' and disappeared from polite usage" prior to being revived with the new innocent usage. 
from my Penguin Classics Crossword Puzzles book again

mondegreen (n): Okay this one's really interesting.  I only looked it up incidentally to find out the lyrics to the Yeasayer song, and found the term mondegreen was coined in 1954 by author Sylvia Wright in Harper's Magazine.  From the Wikipedia article (I can't access the original at Harpers): "When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from Percy's Reliques, and one of my favorite poems began, as I remember:

Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,

Oh, where hae ye been?

They hae slain the Earl O' Moray,

And Lady Mondegreen.

The actual fourth line is 'And laid him on the green.'"  Hence, Wright defined a mondegreen as a word or phrase misheard or misinterpreted due to "near homophony." I could probably venn diagram this concept with malaproprism, but I won't.

Sources:
Online Etymological Dictionary
American Heritage Dictionary
TCM.com
Wikipedia
merriam-webster.com


*For the record, judging me for an imperfect vocabulary when I'm clearly trying to learn more words is like disdaining the fat person sweating it out at the gym.  Which I would be too, if I ever went to the gym.  Anyway, not cool.

**The collection is a neat idea - all the puzzles reference or revolve around Penguin Classic novels.  However, they're generally pretty easy, which is disappointing.