The New York Times once described the Irish highbrow writer John Banville’s many novels as coming “laden with words that seem meant to prove his vocabulary is bigger than yours: flocculent, crapulent, caducous, anaglypta, mephitic, velutinous.” On the occasion of his forthcoming novel, The Singularities (from Knopf), Air Mail has compiled a list of like obscurities from a dozen previous works by the mandarin stylist. Do you know their meaning? Put your pansophism to the test.

  1. brumous adj. (ʹbroo-muss)
    a. huffy
    b. misty
    c. sweeping
  2. gleet n. (gleet)
    a. discharge
    b. joy
    c. sweeping
  3. craquelured adj. (kra-ʹklurd)
    a. brittle
    b. smelling of cheese
    c. crackled
  4. instauration n. (in-stor-ʹay-shun)
    a. restoration
    b. metamorphosis
    c. constellation
  1. plumbeous adj. (ʹplum-bee-uss)
    a. leaden-colored
    b. plum-colored
    c. vertical
  2. sizar n. (ʹsy-zur)
    a. bonnet
    b. viceroy
    c. poor student
  3. bombasine n. (ʹbahm-buh-seen)
    a. chocolate tart
    b. black mourning wear
    c. munitions
  4. oxter n. (ʹahk-stur)
    a. armpit
    b. men’s hard shoe
    c. stableman
  1. macaronic adj. (mak-uh-ʹrah-nik)
    a. dandyish
    b. made of paste or dough
    c. jumbled, as in Spanglish
  2. exsanguinate v. (ek-ʹsang-gwin-ate)
    a. to drain of blood
    b. to render gloomy
    c. to murder
  3. putto n. (ʹputt-toh)
    a. ravine
    b. legging
    c. cupid figure
  4. vermiculate adj. (vur-ʹmik-yoo-lit)
    a. worm-like
    b. mousy
    c. greenish

Answers

1. b. misty
“I tried to make out the lights of Portovenere across the bay … in the brumous air.” —from Ancient Light

2. a. discharge
“He imagines licking that fleck of hardened gleet from the corner of her eye with just the very tip of his tongue.” —The Infinities

3. c. crackled
“This morning it was the state of my eyes that struck me most forcibly, the whites all craquelured over with those tiny bright-red veins.” —The Sea

4. a. restoration
“Yes, I might embark on a great instauration.” —The Blue Guitar

5. a. leaden-colored
“A headachy dawn was breaking, with small rain sifting down out of clouds that were the same plumbeous color as the shadows under Baby’s eyes.” —The Untouchable

6. c. poor student
“I am as intent as any sizar under his lamp.” —Eclipse

7. b. black mourning wear
“Look at me there … ready to lay my head upon this woman’s bombasined bosom and weep my hard heart dry.” —Shroud

8. a. armpit
“Yet here I was, mooning after a girl and lumbered with a dying relative, up to my oxters again in the whole bloody shenanigans.” —Athena

9. c. jumbled, as in Spanglish
“We communicated … in a kind of macaronic jabber.” —Doctor Copernicus

10. a. to drain of blood
“One of us might have exsanguinated into the other’s circulation.” —Mefisto

11. c. cupid figure
“His ancient gaze, out of a putto’s pale eyes, was unnerving.” —The Newton Letter

12. a. worm-like
“I wonder if they feel pain … in their vermiculate world, just as we do, up here in the light?” —Ghosts

Vocabulary Rankings

6 and below: Seussian
7–9: Houyhnhnmean
10–12: Joycean

Howard Kaplan is the proud owner of a Webster’s Third New International, Unabridged

Photo illustration: Chop Choppish Shop. Photo: Kieran Doherty/Reuters/Alamy