hamstringing

無料のEmailサービスで毎日受け取っているThe Japan TimesのToday's top news（8/1/2019）に次の記事がありました。
The overstretched system of dealing with child abuse
Limited manpower and a surge in the number of abuse cases are hamstringing efforts to adequately protect vulnerable children.
"hamstringing" はよく見かける単語ですが、腱とか筋を意味する "hamstringing" ばかり連想して、それ以外の意味が直ぐに出てきません。とりあえず記事の詳細を読みます。
Some prefectures and cities polled reportedly noted that limited manpower and a surge in the number of abuse cases make it tough to observe the 48-hour rule, while others said there’s a limit to putting only child welfare centers in charge of dealing with all suspected cases of child abuse — suggesting that some cases that appear to be of low urgency could be handled by local municipalities instead.
記事の本文では "are hamstringing" を "make it tough" と言い換えていますね。
英英辞書の説明を見ます。

・Oxford English Dictionary: Severely restrict the efficiency or effectiveness of.: we were hamstrung by a total lack of knowledge

・Collins Dictionary: If you hamstring someone, you make it very difficult for them to take any action.: If he becomes the major opposition leader, he could hamstring a conservative-led coalition.

・Cambridge English Dictionary: to limit the amount of something that can be done or the ability or power of someone to do something: The company was hamstrung by traditional but inefficient ways of conducting business.
"hamstringing" が切れる事を連想すれば良いのですね。

gauntlet

'Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google'からの引用です。
This is one way of hiring for that subject of companies that can pull it off. The coolness ensures that the company will get dozen of applicants for every opening and that those applicants will submit to a gauntlet of interview puzzles, stunts, tests, and hazings. At the end, the interviewers skim the most dazzling talent off the top and reject everyone else (most of whom may be perfectly well qualified). It's not hard to understand why companies do this. The mystery is why so many job seekers are mesmerized by corporate mystiques.
"gauntlet" はよく見かける単語で、以前（3/16/2018） "run a gauntlet" を取り上げていますが、 上の引用文に出てきた "gauntlet" は "throw down the gauntlet" の慣用句からの方が意味を連想し易いですね。上の "gauntlet" に合う説明を辞書で見ます。
・Collins Dictionary: a testing ordeal; trial

・Wiktionary: (figuratively) Any challenging, difficult, or painful ordeal, often one performed for atonement or punishment
・V2 Vocabulary Building Dictionary: 1. a challenge issued; 2. a long glove that extends up the forearm; 3. a form of punishment; 4. any trial, difficulty, or obstacle
Tips: Gauntlet is often heard in the phrases "to run the gauntlet," meaning to face criticism from several sides or fronts, "to throw down the gauntlet," meaning to issue a challenge, or "to take up the gauntlet," meaning to accept a challenge.

register too low or too refined

In Other Words（Jhumpa Lajiri著）を読んでいます。
Yet the impulse to track down the right word remains irrepressible, so even in Italian I try. I check the thesaurus, I leaf through my notebook. I put in a new word, just read that morning in the newspaper. But my first readers often shake their heads, saying simply, "It doesn't sound right." They say the word I'd like to use is now considered dated, that it belongs to a register too low or too refined, that it sounds either precious or too coloquial (thus I learned the adjective aulico, lofty).

"register" はこれまでに2度（9/6/2011、5/31/2008） 異なる意味の "register" を取り上げていますが、今回の "register" は又別の意味・用法の様です。辞書を見ます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: A variety of a language or a level of usage, as determined by degree of formality and choice of vocabulary, pronunciation, and syntax, according to the communicative purpose, social context, and standing of the user.: Written language is often a special register, distinct from most styles of speech, and the information conveyed by writing and by speech is not identical.
・Collins Dictionary: In linguistics, the register of a piece of speech or writing is its level and style of language, which is usually appropriate to the situation or circumstances in which it is used.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: the style of language, grammar, and words used for particular situations: People chatting at a party will usually be talking in (an) informal register.

gestation

In Other Words（Jhumpa Lajiri著）を読んでいます。
I've been writing since I was a child in order to forget my imperfections, in order to hide in the background of life, In a certain sense writing is an extended homage to imperfection. A book, like a person, remains imperfect, incomplete, during its entire creation. At the end of the gestation the person is born, then grows, but I consider a book alive only during the writing. Afterward, at least for me, it dies.
"gestation" は以前（9/8/2012）取り上げていますが、男は直接に実感しないせいか、私はどうも忘れる単語です。

gnawing fever

GOTCHA!というWebサイトに「英語多読できるようになるコツまとめ＆おすすめ洋書71選」の記事を見つけ、これから読む本の参考にしたいと思いました。その中の一つ、In Other Wordsを早速買って読むことにしました。これはインド系米国人作家のJhumpa Lajiriがイタリア語で書いた本ですが、面白い事に英語の個所は本人ではなく別の人による翻訳で、イタリア語と英語の両方で併記されている本です。私はイタリア語は全く読めないので英語の個所しか読みませんが、息子の嫁さんがイタリア語を解するので、私が読んだらあげるつもりで買いました。
その中から引用します。
I'm reminded of a passage in Verga, whom I recently discovered: "To think that this patch of ground, a sliver of sky, a vase of flowers might have been enough for me to enjoy all the happiness in the world if I hadn't experienced freedom, if I didn't feel in my heart a gnawing fever for all the joys that are outside these walls!"

"gnawing" うろ覚えですが、何かの漫画で犬が骨をかかじっている、あるいはビーバーが木をかじっている絵を見て憶えた単語です。しかし、それでは "gnawing fever" の意味は分かりません。辞書を見ます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: Persistently worrying or distressing.: that gnawing pain in her stomach
・Collins Dictionary: a sensation of dull, constant pain or suffering
・Cambridge English Dictionary: continuously uncomfortable, worrying, or painful: After three days, we felt an agonizing, gnawing hunger.
なるほど、痛みとか何日も食べれなかった後の空腹を形容する言葉にもなるのですね。

graduated meter

AsimovのI, ROBOTを読んでいます。
It was in the last room, the one nearest the nose, that the monotony broke. A curving window of non-reflecting glass was the first break in the universal metal, and below it was a single large dial, with a single motionless needle hard against the zero mark.
Donovan said, "Look at that!" and pointed to the single word on the finely marked scale.
It said, "Parsecs," and the tiny figure at the right end of the curving, graduated meter said "1,000,000."
"graduate" では卒業することしか思い浮かばないのですが上の個所は別の意味に違いありません。辞書を見ます。
・Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary: marked with lines for measuring: a graduated cylinder [=a tall, narrow container used for measuring liquids]; a graduated thermometer

・Collins Dictionary: Graduated jars are marked with lines and numbers which show particular measurements.: ...a graduated tube marked in millimetres.
なるほど。辞書によっては "graduated cylinder" の項目で説明がありました。
・Cambridge English Dictionary: a glass cylinder that has lines printed on the side of it showing how much it contains, used by scientists: Pour exactly 100 ml of sulphuric acid into a graduated cylinder.

steampunk

'Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google'を読んでいると三十数年前の仕事を思い出させる単語が次の個所に出てきました。

Early television was strictly analog. A horizontally scanning electron beam was deflected up or down by a magnetic field created by an ever-changing voltage. Gray wanted to convert the analog voltage into a digital number (a series of coded pulses). Engineers of the time had the rather steampunk notion of shooting the electron beam through a mask with holes representing binary numbers. Different parts of the mask, corresponding to different degrees of deflection, had different patterns of holes.
当時商社の駐在員としてシカゴで働いていましたが、日本のメーカーのＴＶの部品とＩＣ用のセラミックパッケージを米国のメーカーに販売していました。そのＴＶの部品は今では死語になってきたブラウン管に使われる、鉄板に特殊な形状をした穴のある、シャドウマスクと呼ばれるものでした。それが上記の引用文では単に "mask" となっている物です。
さて、今日取り上げたいのは "steampunk" なる聞き慣れない単語です。辞書を見ます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: A style of design and fashion that combines historical elements with anachronistic technological features inspired by science fiction.: The essence of steampunk is homage to vintage fashion with a modern, sassy twist.

・Dictionary.com: a subgenre of science fiction and fantasy featuring advanced machines and other technology based on steam power of the 19th century and taking place in a recognizable historical period or a fantasy world.

"steampunk" と呼ばれるＳＦがあるのですね。
WORD SPYに書かれていた記事からの抜粋です。
Steampunk often imagines what the past would have been like if the future hadn’t happened so quickly. It imagines, in other words, what engineers and inventors might have come up with if they’d had another, say, one hundred years to tinker with mechanical and steam-powered machines. (Some examples: a steam-powered flamethrower; a spaceship made of steel and wood.) In other cases, steampunk envisions a historical world that has modern elements. For example, in The Difference Engine, Gibson and coauthor Bruce Sterling imagine a late 19th century world in which Charles Babbage was able to build his “difference engine” — the first computer — and so the computer and communications revolution occurred one hundred years earlier than it did.

go out on a limb

'Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google'からの引用です。

1. Go to floor N and drop the first egg.
How do I know the algorithm begins this way? Well, I'm not going out on much of a limb. An algorithim is a list of idotproof instructions, starting with instrution 1. It tells you to drop an egg, naturally, because that's the modus operandi here.
"going out on much of a limb" の個所の意味がよく分からないので辞書で調べます。
・Wikitionary: To take a risk.: He doesn't want to go out on a limb, but he really should give it a try.

・Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary: If you go out on a limb, you do something or say something that is different from what most people do or say and is therefore risky. He does not want to go out on a limb and try something completely new. There's nothing wrong with politicians going out on a limb sometimes and risking their reputation.

"go out on a limb" の語源についてはPhrase Finderに次の説明がありました。（抜粋）
The limb being talked about here is the branch of a tree and 'out on a limb' is an allusion to climbing trees and going just a bit further than is comfortable.
調べている内に思い出しました。5/26/2015 に "out on a limb" を既に調べた事を。

technically correct but completely useless

'Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google'からの引用です。

With apologies to the folks in Redmond, I'll end on another Microsoft joke because it makes the point well (a point that applies everywhere, not just at Microsoft): A helicopter was flying around above Seattle when a malfunction disabled all of its electronic navigation and communications equipment. The clouds were so thick that the pilot couldn't tell where he was. Finally, the pilot saw a tall building, flew toward it, circled, and held up a handwritten sign that said WHERE AM I? in large letter. People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drawing their own large sign: YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER. The pilot smiled, looked at his map, determined the route to Sea-Tac Airport, and landed safely. After they were on the ground, the copilot asked the pilot how he had done. "I knew it had to be the Microsoft building," he said, "because they gave me a technically correct but completely useless answer."
"technically correct but completely useless" の答えや対応にとまどう経験は確かにありますね。

auricular muscle

今日も筋肉についての話題です。
Reader's Digest 6月号の記事 'Your True Stories in 100 Words' から引用します。
You might be able to wiggle your ears. Thirty millon years ago, the three auricular muscles of the outer ear helped our evolutionary ancestors pivot their ears the way cats do. This movement doesn't serve much purpose to modern humans--other than as a party trick. Scientists aren't sure why, but only about 10 to 20 percent of us are able to engage those muscles to wiggle our ears.
私も耳を動かせますが、この記事によると動かせない人の方が多いのですね。
"auricular muscles" が耳を動かす筋肉なので、"auricular" は耳に関係する意味を持つ言葉の様ですが、辞書で確認します。
・Oxford English Dictionary: Relating to the ear or hearing.: the Catholic doctrine of the necessity of private auricular confession

・Collins Dictionary: of, relating to, or received by the sense or organs of hearing; aural: Ear drops are administered in an auricular administration.

"aural" と関係があるのですね。