retiring: shy, fond of being alone caviling: make petty objections base: without moral principles, ignoble machinate: scheme hobnobbing: mix socially, esp with higher status
schmoozing: talk intimately, gossip ponderously: slow, clumsy, laborious insolvent: unable to pay debts monolithic: large and slow to change venial: pardonable and forgivable acme: peak, pinnacle, zenith penury: extreme poverty ignominious: humiliating, shameful, chagrined peripatetic penurious ancillary exegesis stilted untenable apocryphal truculent hold forth on inept pejorative enfeeble presage portend brevity