Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Sesquipedalian

I love big, weird words. The titular word I just now learned reading this short post about an offbeat remembrance of which John Updike plays a part.

As Buckley does in Nordlinger’s post, I often jot down unfamiliar and curiously attractive words I stumble across reading a book, but, unfortunately, I fail to herd them into a commonsense place for easy review, like, say, I don’t know – a notebook. Usually these slips of papers, half-torn envelopes, business card backs, napkins, or anything else that can serve as a big-word-repository (there must be a big word for that) get thrown out inadvertently, and I am left less a man.

Oh well.

In honor of sesquipedalian John Updike, not a single book or story of whose work I’ve read, I pledge to create and maintain my big-word-repository from now on.

Godspeed, as they say …

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