A few months ago, I read the 1997 New Yorker article “Trump Solo“. Politics aside, it’s a long-format article profiling then-businessman Trump at a turbulent time in his career and personal life. “Trump Solo” is a great insight into the world at a time when I was pretty oblivious to pop culture and politics. As I read the article, I was struck by how the article refrained from unnecessary brevity or simplicity, and did not go out of its way to keep the reader entertained. Furthermore, I found myself having to look up a surprising number of words in the article. Not to toot my own horn, but, in my adult life, it’s pretty rare that I encounter a word in English and am largely unable to define it.
This article used so many words unfamiliar to me that I started recording them, with the intent of updating said list as I kept reading other news articles and books. Currently, most of my reading is suggested articles from The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, and other periodicals, along with news sites like BBC World News or The Guardian. For better or wose, I haven’t been reading nearly as many books in recent years.
However, I’ve observed something interesting, if not concerning. As I read other articles that popped up in my suggested feed in Facebook and Instagram and on the /r/news and /r/politics subreddits and other feeds, the list of new words remained unchanged. A reading diet that consisted primarily of contemporary articles in different mainstream magazines and news sites failed to provide any new challenges for my word stock.
Finally, last week, I read the New Yorker article “A Loaded Gun“. It was lengthy. It was not a particularly easy read. Most importantly, I found two words I had to Google! At the end of the article, I looked down at the publication date: It had been published in 2013. My list had finally been updated, but by an article old enough to grow peach fuzz.
After all that, here’s the list, as it stands now:
The List
| Word | Source Reading Material |
| palaver | Trump Solo |
| prefatory | Trump Solo |
| unpropitious | Trump Solo |
| peregrinations | Trump Solo |
| noblesse oblige | Trump Solo |
| putative | Trump Solo |
| perspicacious | Trump Solo |
| prevaricate | Trump Solo |
| doyenne | Trump Solo |
| pied-à-terre | Trump Solo |
| freebooter | Trump Solo |
| arpeggio | A Loaded Gun |
| imprimatur | A Loaded Gun |
Who knows how I’ll go about updating this list. I’m not much of a WordPress user, so i don’t know if I’ll pin it somewhere or just post updates periodically. Until then, happy reading!