forgotten words

In 1998 I was reading a book, exactly which book I can not recollect, and as I read I kept a list of all the words I enjoyed reading. Today, I found that list crammed into a book and thought it interesting enough to share. I wish I knew what the book was; the collection of words is quite unique.

Precipitous
Demiurge - A Platonic deity who orders or fashions the material world out of chaos.
Bellicose - inclined or eager to fight; aggressively hostile; belligerent; pugnacious.
Manikin
Mandala
Culet - a small face forming the bottom of a faceted gem, Armor. a piece below the backplate, composed of lames and correspondingto the fauld in front.
Anchorite - a person who has retired to a solitary place for a life of religious seclusion; hermit.
Pellucid - allowing the maximum passage of light, as glass; translucent.
Temenus - a son of Pelasgus believed to have reared Hera.
Abattoir - to slaughter
Balaclava - a close-fitting, knitted cap that covers the head, neck, and tops of the shoulders, worn esp. by mountain climbers, soldiers, skiers, etc.
Scuppered - to prevent from happening or succeeding; ruin; wreck.
Primus - a bishop who is elected to represent the church body and to summon and preside at synods but who possesses no metropolitan power.
Cloaca - the common cavity into which the intestinal, urinary, and generative canals open in birds, reptiles, amphibians, many fishes, and certain mammals.
Portent - an indication or omen of something about to happen, esp. something momentous.
Amalgam
Noctivagant - Going about in the night; night-wandering.
Beldam - an old woman, esp. an ugly one; hag.
Hermetic
Chthonic - of or pertaining to the deities, spirits, and other beings dwelling under the earth.
Semaphore - an apparatus for conveying information by means of visual signals, as a light whose position may be changed.
Lutz - A jump in figure skating in which the skater takes off from the back outer edge of one skate and makes one full rotation before landing on the back outer edge of the other skate.
Triune - three in one; constituting a trinity in unity, as the Godhead.
Aliquot - Mathematics. forming an exact proper divisor: An aliquot part of 15 is 5.
Priapic - suggestive of or resembling a phallus by its shape.
Rebus - a representation of a word or phrase by pictures, symbols, etc., that suggest that word or phrase or its syllables: Two gates and a head is a rebus for Gateshead.
Remora - the fatal thing that utterly alters a confident course. "sucking fish," 1567, from L. remora, lit. "delay, hindrance," from re- "back" + mora "delay;" so called because the fish were believed by the ancients to retard a vessel to which they attached themselves. Pliny writes that Antony's galley was delayed by one at the Battle of Actium. Sometimes called in Eng. stayship or stopship.
Paralipomena - Things that are omitted. Not told
Sanguinary - full of or characterized by bloodshed; bloody: a sanguinary struggle.
Effusions
Teutonic
Peregrination - to travel from one place to another. traveling abroad
Copula - something that connects or links together.