Not your usual argot

As might be guessed from Monday's post, I'm reading Dirda's Classics for Pleasure. There's much to learn from Dirda as a critic, but also for anyone looking to build vocabulary. Here are 20 words I've learned and been reminded of while reading his essays:

1. antinomian - view that Christians are released from the obligation of observing moral law
2. arch - affected playful teasing
3. argot - the jargon or slang of a particular group or class
4. bathos - anticlimax created by unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the ridiculous
5. bruit - spread a report or rumor widely
6. costive - constipated
7. crepuscular - relating to twilight
8. dithyramb - choral hymn of ancient Greece
9. encomium - a speech or writing that praises highly
10. epigrammatic - concise, clever, amusing
11. etiology - the cause or reason for something
12. irrupt - enter forcibly or suddenly
13. jingoism - extreme patriotism, especially in the form of aggressive or warlike foreign policy
14. lapidary - and elegant and concise statement
15. lubricious - displaying or intending to arouse sexual desire
16. purlieus - areas near or surrounding a place
17. sanguine - cheerfully optimistic
18. scabrous - indecent, salacious
19. venal - motivated by susceptibility to bribery
20. venery - sexual indulgence

Dirda seems especially fond, given the repetition, of these five words:

acme - point at which something is at the best, most successful
winsome - attractive or appealing in character
quotidian - mundane
chicanery - trickery to achieve a legal, political, or financial purpose
quicksilver - moves and changes quickly, hard to contain

All definitions from the OED