Vocabulary

It looks like I made a good investment when I bought an Oxford Dictionary. Come to think of it, my folks gave it to me as a Christmas present one year. I think there was a subtle hint as to my having a real need for it. This new book I’ve been reading, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, by Bernard Bailyn has got a few winners. I have stated for quite some time that I was never much on the scholarly attributes; however, I have a fairly good vocabulary, at least I thought I did.

Try to remember the last time you saw or used any of the following words in an everyday sentence. You are exempt from this if you have recently written a college thesis.

1 “jeremiad”
2 “polemical”
3 “vituperation”
4 “protean”

Okay, times up, and I have to confess that I had to guess first and then go look them up. Having a fairly good idea based on how they were placed into sentences helped; but I wanted to be sure. I like to place notes along the edges of my pages to remind me that I have a long way to go before I can consider myself educated. There is hope for me yet as I am willing to learn as I go. Some of my friends would have simply kept on going; not even caring what the strange looking words meant. Actually they would never have picked up this particular book, instead opting for another hour of Desperate Housewives or American Idol. I suspect that I will be challenged quite a bit more the deeper into the book I get.

As a secondary challenge; does anyone out there have access to some of these ancient pamphlets as referenced; such as the pamphlet titled, “The Civil State Compared to Rivers”, written by Ebenezer Chaplin. I looked for it on Yahoo and Google search and came up empty. I’d like to have more than a reference, I want to read the original as opposed to a footnote entry. One “atta-boy” if you can aim my mouse in the right direction.