ADMINICLE.

While looking for something entirely different in the Cassell Concise Dictionary, I ran across the word adminicle, defined as:
1 an aid, support. 2 (Sc. Law) corroborative evidence, esp. of the contents of a missing document.

I particularly like the OED’s last citation:
1872 Daily News 2 Oct. 5 Floriculture and other adminicles of civilisation.

Pure essence of Victorian Latinity! The adjective, of course, is adminicular (‘auxiliary, corroborative’), which I intend to use whenever maximum obfuscation is a desideratum.

Update. Margaret of Transblawg has done some follow-up research on this irresistible word.

Further update (Mar. 2025). The OED revised the entry in 2011; it now reads:

1. Something which provides help or assistance, esp. in a subordinate or supporting capacity; an aid, an accessory; an adjunct. Frequently with to. Now rare.

1551 The auctor would haue the Sacramentes..to be adminicles (as it were).
S. Gardiner, Explicatio Catholique Fayth 14
[…]

1646 To take care of the maintenance of the Ministery, Schooles, poor, and of good works for necessary uses, that Religion and Learning may not want their necessary adminicles.
G. Gillespie, Aarons Rod Blossoming ii. viii. 263
[…]

1788 The invention contained in these verses is..so great an adminicle to the dexterous management of syllogisms.
T. Reid, Aristotle’s Logic iv. §2. 74
[…]

1872 Floriculture and other adminicles of civilisation.
Daily News 2 October 5

1900 To Dr. Osgood Classical Mythology is an adminicle to the study of Milton, and not a study in itself.
American Journal of Philology vol. 21 234
[…]

1996 The final declaration..went yet further; an adminicle to the Kadets’ commitment to active Russification of minority regions, it read: [etc.].
J. D. Smele, Civil War in Siberia iii. 295

2. A piece of supporting or corroborative evidence; something which, without forming complete proof in itself, helps to prove a point; (esp. in Scots Law) a document tending to prove the existence and tenor of a lost deed, which if it existed would have been full evidence.

1592 That the tryall..sall nocht be ressauit without verie greit adminicles.
Acts of Parliament of Scotland (1814) vol. III. 569/2

1600 The..breifs fund vpon him, and vther adminicles.
in W. Fraser, Mem. Earls of Haddington (1889) vol. II. 208
[…]

1706 Adminicle..In Civil-Law, it signifies imperfect Proof.
Phillips’s New World of Words (new edition)
[…]

1965 An accused under arrest may in Scotland be..stripped, searched and probed for marks, blood stains, and other adminicles of evidence.
Journal Forensic Sci. Society vol. 5 147

2000 An adminicle of evidence need not be unequivocally in support of the prosecution case to amount to corroboration.
P. R. Ferguson in M. Childs & L. Ellison, Feminist Perspectives on Evidence viii. 164

3. † In plural. Ornaments placed around the figure of Juno as conventionally represented on a medal, coin, etc. Cf. attribute n. 3. Obsolete. rare.

1728 Among Antiquaries, the term Adminicules is applied to the Attributes, or Ornaments wherewith Juno is represented on Medals.
E. Chambers, Cyclopædia at Adminicle

1754 Adminicles, among antiquarians, denote the attributes or ornaments wherewith Juno is represented on medals.
New & Complete Dictionary of Arts & Sciences vol. I. 46/2

(Not sure why they used both those virtually identical citations.) The etymology:

< Middle French adminicle, Middle French, French adminicule means to an end (1466; compare Anglo-Norman adminicle auxiliary right (a1315 in an apparently isolated attestation)), help, support (1555), (in law) piece of corroborative evidence (1586), attribute of Juno, as depicted on medals (1721 or earlier) and its etymon classical Latin adminiculum (also adminiclum, rare) prop, stake, support, person or thing on which one relies, in post-classical Latin also corroborative evidence (frequently from 13th cent. in British sources) < ad- ad- prefix + an element of uncertain origin (see note) + ‑culum ‑culum suffix; compare ‑cle suffix, ‑cule suffix. Compare later adminiculum n.

Notes

The second element of classical Latin adminiculum may be related to classical Latin minae threats (see minacious adj.) or to classical Latin moenia walls (see munite v.).

Interesting that they don’t know what the -min- part is from.