This word appears in an editorial by Paul Krugman in the New York Times: “The key point is that ever since the Reagan years, the Republican Party has been dominated by radicals — ideologues and/or apparatchiks who, at a fundamental level, do not accept anyone else’s right to govern.”

I just read an article that described Rainer Maria Rilke as, among other things, lachrymose.

This word appeared in a Newsweek article that I read a few weeks ago. I think it was referring to the Bush presidency.

This is a funny word. Hehe. My friend and I were talking about training today, and this word came up. It’s from the Swedish: fart (“speed”) + lek (“play”).

I came across this word in a New Yorker article recently. Can’t remember which one.

I came across this word in a Daily Mail article: “The shop assistant in Poundland is becoming increasingly dyspeptic. In fact, I’m concerned he might just turn round and hit me.” Not sure what I was doing reading the Daily Mail.

One of the characters in The Mysterious Benedict Society is S. Q. Pedialian. I’ve been reading the book to my son, and we’ve been loving it.

William Safire has a great “On Language” column in the December 31, 2008, edition of the New York Times Magazine. About the words imprecation and execration, he writes: “These bookish terms of excessive condemnation are out of critical fashion, merely evoking the exclamation by Snoopy, the cartoon character from Peanuts, ‘Curse you, Red Baron!’”

The noun form of this word has a few definitions, but I wanted to focus on the verb form, because, much to my surprise, somebody used this word correctly on Twitter today. Too often people write “compliment” when they mean “complement.” And that irks me.

This word appears in a New York Times editorial by Nicholas D. Kristof: “a pedant is a supercilious show-off who drops references to Sophocles and masks his shallowness by using words like ‘fulgent’ and ‘supercilious.’ ”