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.
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 petulantMr. 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 ostentationHis command of
inconsequentiality has
elicited comment
Along with his
patrician drawing-room leftism
Mr. Lapham’s logic is
errantMr. 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