Proddie: an offensive word for a Protestant.
hurd: the coarse parts of flax or hemp
herd: a collection of animals
heard: past of hear
Hurled: past tense of “drank too much” 
border: an edge, or the frontier between two jurisdictions
boarder: one who pays for meals and lodging at a private home or a school
hammock: a swinging sling suspended at the ends used for sleeping or resting
hummock: a small hill
ween: to suppose, imagine; to think, believe; to expect, hope, or wish
wean: to cease to depend on mother’s milk for nutrition
secret: to make or keep secret; to hide secretly
secrete: to exude or yield
penitence: the state of feeling remorse or regret
penance: a voluntary act of self-punishment or hardship, done to show repentance or make amends for one’s misdeeds or sins
pennants - triangular flags
penitentiary: a prison or reformatory where one “pays one’s debt to society”
pentagon - any five sided polygon. May be regular (all 5 sides are equal and all five angles are equal) or not, and may be convex or not.
pentagram - a regular star pentagon; that is, it consists of the diagonals of a regular convex pentagon.
pentacle - a pentagram used in Western ceremonial magic, often drawn inscribed in a circle.
combination: an object formed by bringing things together
commination: a formal threat
bast: a type of fiber derived from inner stems of dicotyledonous plants; e.g., flax, jute, hemp.
baste: to stitch fabric pieces together temporarily with long stitches for ease of adjusting seams, from Old French bastir “to build, construct”
baste: to moisten roasting meat with liquid while cooking, possibly from Old French basser “to soak”
baste: to beat with a stick, possibly from Germanic word meaning “to strike”, cognate with English “beat”
So Frankenstein’s Monster was, literally, a bastard?
Basteard.
No no no, Frankenstein’s monster was doubtless properly seamed for durability once his construction had been adequately tweaked in the fitting process. You don’t send an anthropoid monster out into this harsh world merely held together with basting stitches.
few: only a small number, not many. Typically implies lack, paucity, dearth, with negative connotations.
a few: a small but nonzero number, a meaningful amount, enough for right now. Typically implies a sort of last-ditch preservation from lack, paucity, dearth, with positive connotations.
This one’s subtle, and I was reminded of it when reading a work in South Asian English (a set of linguistic varieties of English that evolved in the colonial South Asian subcontinent), in which the former term is used the same way the latter is in US English. Which can be surprisingly confusing.
For instance, I’d read a sentence like “There were few remaining teachers, so the ancient art was rescued from oblivion” and feel a bit puzzled, because I’d expect a sentence beginning that way to turn out more negative: “There were few remaining teachers, so the ancient art sank into oblivion” or something like that.
But no, the author meant “few” in the sense that I would use “a few”, or “some”, etc.: i.e., there were just enough remaining teachers to prevent the ancient art from sinking into oblivion. Two nations divided by a common language, indeed!
supernal: pertaining to heaven, celestial; exquisite, exalted
superb: first-rate, exceptionally good
Combine those two and one gets the idea that the Heavenly City has suburbs.
That’s really interesting - never noticed this. You explained the difference well.
English has a lot of verbs that are made of a “verb plus preposition,” with a different meaning than the bare verb (usually, the “v plus p” version equates to a completely different word in another language, like “throw” is lanzar in Spanish, but “throw up” is vomitar).
In Malaysian English, the “p” is often dropped from a “v plus p” verb. So, my wife (raised in Malaysia, but a longtime US resident/citizen) will still ask me to “throw this banana peel,” when she wants me to throw it away. I’m always tempted to hurl the thing across the room.