Out of Town Words: The William F. Buckley Vocabulary Quiz

William F. Buckley Jr., who died this week at age 82, had the vocabulary of a mischievous lexicographer, "sparkling with phrases from distant eras," as Douglas Martin said in Wednesday's New York Times.

Author of more than 50 books and for many years the editor of National Review magazine, Buckley delighted in perplexing as well as edifying readers with his intimidating arsenal of what he called "out of town words." In Buckley: The Right Word (Random House, 1996), he wrote, "I am often accused of an inordinate reliance on unusual words, and desire to defend myself against the insinuation that I write as I do simply to prove that I have returned recently from the bowels of a dictionary with a fish in my mouth."

He then listed some of the more arcane words that regularly appeared in his syndicated column, "On the Right." Drawing on that list, we now offer--for the benefit of word lovers, Buckley admirers, and students preparing for the SAT--the William F. Buckley, Jr. Vocabulary Quiz:

1. albescent
2. analogue
3. attican
4. auto-da-fe
5. cartesian
6. chiliastic
7. credenda
8. deracination
9. dithyrambic
10. dysgenically
11. epigoni
12. eremitical
13. eschatological
14. excogitation
15. ferula
16. fons et origo
17. fusilier
18. hegemonic
19. periphrastic
20. satyagraha
21. tergiversation
22. velleity

To check the definitions of these words, visit any good-sized English dictionary, such as The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. That said, you may have to rely on a Greek dictionary for epigoni ("a second-rate imitator") and attican ("a characteristic of ancient Athens"), a Latin dictionary for credenda ("articles of faith") and fons et origo ("source and origin").

But then why, you're probably asking, should anybody care about such unusual words--words that our readers are unlikely to understand? Here's how Buckley justified his sesquipedalian ways:

Because just as the discriminating ear greets gladly the C augmented 11th when just the right harmonic moment has come for it, so the fastidious eye encounters happily the word that says exactly what the writer wished not only said but conveyed, the writer here defined as a performing writer sensitive to cadence, variety, marksmanship, accent, nuance and drama. WHAT of the reader who misses the refinement? Well, what of the listener deaf to the special reach of the C augmented 11th?

That reader has the usual choices: he can ignore the word; attempt, from the context, to divine its meaning precisely or roughly . . .; or he can look it up.
("I Am Lapidary But Not Eristic When I Use Big Words," The New York Times, November 30, 1986)

And so, with eyebrows arched and tongue flickering, we'll excogitate on that for awhile as we bid William F. Buckley a simple vade in pace.

More Words About Words:

• Which "Webster's Dictionary" Is the Real Thing?
• Vocabulary Builder #1: Antonyms
• Common Prefixes

Image: William F. Buckley Jr. (1925-2008), © National Review