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jotham Offline OP
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Does anyone know a magazine that has liberal doses of erudite literary vocabulary (i.e., not necessarily jargon) like I see on Wordsmith? I'd like to buy a subscription to one or more magazines and mark them up to study the words and how they're used in context. I'm just having trouble finding a good magazine; so far, I've identified American Spectator as a good possibility, but there must be others. Or perhaps someone could direct me to an author whose books I could purchase.
Any help would be appreciated,
I can be reached at
jotham73 at hotmail.com

Last edited by jotham; 12/07/07 05:02 AM.
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I don't have any subscriptions like that for myself; however, I've had recommendations from other people whose opinions I value:
The Economist
The New Yorker
The Atlantic Monthly

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welcome, jot!

I don't know about magazines, but Arts & Letters Daily is a wonderful online source.


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Originally Posted By: TheFallibleFiend
I don't have any subscriptions like that for myself; however, I've had recommendations from other people whose opinions I value:
The Economist
The New Yorker
The Atlantic Monthly

Yes, I'm familiar with those journals and they are very fine. I especially like the New Yorker's pithy style. But when it comes to erudite vocabulary, I don't find the frequency to be as high. All journals have interesting vocabulary and it usually depends on the writer, but it's not altogether uncommon that in just one article of the American Spectator, for example, I can find at least six or more interesting words or usages — or at least interesting to me. I list examples in two articles below:
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12387
The great Talmudic genius...led the rabbinic court
writing of the divorce was proceeding apace
her poor cuckolded husband
which conservative principle would be subverted by such solidarity
has run afoul of free-market orthodoxy
targeted the Republican Party as a generic counterforce
inimical to their cause
being treated as the bogeyman
This type of behavior wreaks havoc with an image of ideological constancy
The company sells widgets to the public
unions emerged from the catalyst of socialism and are still intoxicated by its matrix
with its attendant potential for thuggery
that should eventually ramify to the benefit of the inventors of the product
They are not acting like royalty, only scrounging for royalties

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12398
the Republican Party is dredging up the specter of "HillaryCare"
the stillborn beast Clinton unveiled
government can harness private-sector competition
Give Hillary credit for her political wiles.
she is positioned to hoist Republicans by their own petard.
regulations that hobble the health-care industry
ill-conceived tax laws
And they've unwittingly created a monster
these principles cannot be engineered by a government bureaucracy.
Any program that codifies health care as a public good
To prevent this bureaucratic Rube Goldberg machine from collapsing, legislators invariably resort to price controls,
a market mired in bureaucracy
Piecemeal government interventions into the market...must be dismantled

Does anyone else know of other journals that are similarly filled with interesting words and usages?

Last edited by jotham; 12/07/07 04:50 PM.
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Originally Posted By: etaoin
welcome, jot!

I don't know about magazines, but Arts & Letters Daily is a wonderful online source.


Thanks for that excellent site. I notice a list of magazines on the left side. I've looked at perhaps half of those, so I'll try to analyze the others.
Cheers...

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If the political slant is not a big concern, Mother Jones ( http://www.motherjones.com/ ) might be of interest.


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jot: Welcome. I admire your determination to learn. Were I as resolute in my earlier years I could have been a better writer. I love Japan, having lived there some 6 years. I am dalehieman@verizon.net


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If political slant is not a concern, how about National Review or The New Republic?

Or, politics aside(?), The New York Review of Books.

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Browse the dictionary with a pencil.

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jotham Offline OP
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Originally Posted By: Hydra
Browse the dictionary with a pencil.

Ha, good one. I need context, preferably in a paragraph — and in a format that isn't unwieldy so I can carry it around and study on the subway without looking silly.

Originally Posted By: tsuwm
If political slant is not a concern, how about National Review or The New Republic?
Or, politics aside(?), The New York Review of Books.

National Review was actually second on my list. I found The New Republic and Mother Jones average for vocabulary. Thanks for the suggestion on The New York Review of Books; it seems a good option and comparable to National Review.
I also discovered a magazine that beats them all — The New Criterion, some of whose writers employ ample vocabulary. Here's a sample:

http://newcriterion.com:81/archives/26/12/laphams-latest-folly/
The notebooks of the English aesthete...are a trove of amusing aperçus, anecdotes, and apothegms.
This 7,500-word philippic appeared in...Harper’s...with a brief hiatus...
...not the heat of its invective...but its mendacity.
Mr. Lapham intoned...
...neglected to take the elementary precaution of publishing his piece
Confronted with his dereliction, Mr. Lapham waxed petulant
Mr. Lapham’s cavalier disregard for historical fact...
...it is ironical (not to say contemptibly risible)
...magazine ostensibly dedicated to history...requires a disinterested respect for the truth
It is lavishly produced
...consists mostly of promiscuous gleanings from the past
The sophomoric identifications provide a good index
The pretentiousness adumbrated in that list emerges with febrile ostentation
His command of inconsequentiality has elicited comment
Along with his patrician drawing-room leftism
Mr. Lapham’s logic is errant
Mr. Lapham’s incontinent logic is disorienting
...it stymies forthright discussion
...addiction...to the ephemeral, bequeaths us an intellectual poverty
But by swaddling that important commonplace with his baroque, politically tendentious verbiage
...disaster of historical nescience
...a symptom of the cultural cataclysm it pretends to diagnose

Last edited by jotham; 12/10/07 06:22 PM.
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