The Lexicon: A Cornucopia of Wonderful Words for the Inquisitive Word Lover

It includes many words that most of us would never use. But it's fun exploring and enjoying his examples of word usage -- enlightening, humorous, acerbic, anfractuous, aphoristic, and more.

I recently finished David Crystal's "The Story of English in 100 Words," and it prompted my purchase of W.F. Buckley's book, "The Lexicon." As a pretentious student of words, Buckley's book has been a healthy dose of humility to mitigate my hubris. The man could correctly use so many words. I've read several books by Buckley and about Buckley, and watched hours of firing line and his interviews on youtube. With this background, I believe that Buckley really did have a working knowledge of all of the words listed in this wordbook. I've memorized many of these words for graduate school examinations but I have yet to work them into my everyday speech. WFB was brilliant in that regard; erudite to the core. I use this book mostly as a motivator of what is possible. I arduously pick through this book in an attempt to increase my working vocabulary. It's a wonderful book, with a wonderful introduction, and a very brief overview of the how this book came about in the back. This book is a window into the words that Buckley found useful and important. Conservatives and liberals would do well to read and implement this book into their everyday agendas. Regardless of what one may think about Buckley, and his persuasions, this book is so damn good. (I bought the $10 one, not the $4 one, fyi)

Whether I agreed with him about a particular subject or not, I always loved listening to and/or reading from William F. Buckley, Jr., because of his brilliant mind, incredible vocabulary and sense of humor (and still count it a great privilege that I was able to attend two of his "Firing Line" debates, including the final one). THE LEXICON evokes fond memories and, hopefully, becomes efficacious in the eventuation of a decidedly more euphonious (if not to the level of a desideratum) colloquy.

I write this the day after President Obama finally acknowledged the babbling, screaming yokels and produced his birth form. Are the jackels happy now? Not really. They are tearing the document apart and calling Obama a liar. It's a sad day for America when a president feels the need to bow down to that level. But that is how stupid this country has become. The conservative movement is now in the hands of the Tea Party crackpots and mental giants like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann (hey, how about that for a 2012 ticket!?!). WFB must be spinning in his grave, seeing the witless mouth breathers and hateful 'nabobs of negativity' who've hijacked his party. You may have guessed that I am a liberal to the core but I've always loved to watch, listen to and read WFB. Anything he had to say was pretty interesting to me, purely because of what he said, and, almost as important, the way he said it. I am a long-time "word junkie", but I only recently came across this book, I'm sorry to say. What makes this particular volume truly unique is that the list of words, the definitions of the words, and the all-important citations of the words are all from WFB himself. The wonderful contextual examples all come from the WFB's own writings, and it is obvious that he was comfortable with these difficult words and knew them well enough to use them properly. It's amazing how many of the "hard" words you hear and see and read are actually in this book. When I pick up one of these, I always look for a group of particular words, which, to me, are mandatory for inclusion. These words are: epistomology, inchoate, jejune, orotund, and quotidian. Not surprisingly, all are included here. I would have given the book five stars if (1) it had more words to make it more complete; (2) had pronunciations (I'm guessing that I was comfortable in pronouncing 85-90% of the words, however); and (3) had etymologies of the words (but of course, these can be found in a dictionary). For a "logophile", this is certainly an indispensible book. Too bad that someone didn't have the bright idea of making a DVD or series of DVD's of this book, with WFB the star, simply expounding, in his inimitable way, on the wonders of language. For me, this is one of the better books of this kind mainly because of that piquant WFB touch.

I enjoy listening to WFB, his vocabulary is astounding. However, this book has a few laughable entries - akin to saying "Laser" in air quotes because some of the words are mainstream, though obviously at the time of this book's publishing some words were quite new to the world. Worth adding to your library, WFB's personality shines through in the examples given often bringing a surprise smile to the reader.

Knowledge

Just received the book and WOW! I always watched his show and tried to watch him whenever he was on at other times. Anyone that was with me cringed when I watched him but .... their loss! When I read the words and where he used them I can picture him in his chair, leaning back and finding the correct word before putting his sentence together. A recent Vanity Fair issue had some great insight to him and his wife. What a man! Now I have to get the dvds to get what the book can't give ....... the "expressions" to go with the words! Like a previous review, I too wish the pronunciations would have been included in the book. Lexicons will STILL be a dictionary for me.

This is written in classic Buckley style ! Buckley not only provides words that can be used as alternatives to common language but also provides very precise examples of how the words can be used. I keep "The Lexicon" on my desk at all times ! Buckley is my ad hoc Yale English language professor !

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