William F. Buckley Jr.
and the Case for the Right Word
He used words like lucubrate, pellucid, and otiose not to intimidate — but because they were, precisely, the right words. A vocabulary lesson from the master of “Buckleyese.”
A Pointer from a Reader
On the day Lemmerly launched, a reader left a comment pointing to William F. Buckley Jr. and his book The Right Word. It was, as Buckley himself might have said, an apposite observation.
Buckley — editor, author, debater, television host — was for decades the most publicly visible exemplar of what a serious English vocabulary looks like in practice. His style, dubbed “Buckleyese” by admirers and critics alike, was characterised by precision, density, and an unapologetic preference for the exact word over the approximate one.
What Made Buckleyese Distinctive
Buckley's vocabulary was not an affectation. It was a philosophy. He believed, with some conviction, that the decay of vocabulary was inseparable from the decay of thought — that if you could not distinguish between imply and infer, between disinterested and uninterested, between refute and rebut, you were likely also failing to think clearly about the things those words described.
His television programme Firing Line, which ran for 33 years, was a masterclass in this approach. Guests who arrived expecting a shouting match found instead a precise, almost forensic interlocutor — one who might pause mid-sentence to select, from a dozen near-synonyms, the one that most exactly captured his meaning.
The words he favoured were rarely obscure for obscurity's sake. Otiose — serving no practical purpose — is a more economical word than “pointless and redundant and serving no real function.” Tendentious captures something that “biased” does not quite reach. Pellucid describes a particular quality of clarity that “clear” leaves underspecified.
This is the argument for a rich vocabulary that goes beyond examination preparation. It is not about knowing more words — it is about thinking more precisely.
The Buckley Canon — Words He Made Famous
Below is a selection of words associated with Buckley's style. Each is in the Lemmerly corpus — rated by difficulty, enriched with etymology and usage examples. Play them and see how you fare against the Buckley standard.
The Right Word — Not the Clever Word
Buckley's book The Right Word (1996) collected his thoughts on language and usage over decades. Its central argument was simple: precision in language is a form of respect — for your reader, for your subject, and for truth itself.
This is subtly different from the argument made by most vocabulary guides, which tend to frame word acquisition as a competitive advantage — learn these 3,000 words and score higher on your GRE. Buckley's argument was more fundamental: use the right word because it is the right word, not because it will impress anyone.
The paradox is that people who pursue vocabulary for its own sake — who are genuinely curious about the history and nuance of words — tend to develop far richer vocabularies than those who approach it instrumentally. Buckley was a case in point. He did not study vocabulary lists. He read voraciously, in multiple languages, and attended to words the way a musician attends to sound.
What Would Buckley's ELO Be?
It is an amusing question. Based on his documented usage — the frequency with which he deployed words in the 1,600–1,800 ELO range as if they were ordinary conversation — one suspects he would have tested out somewhere in Lex Grandmaster territory. He might have found the exercise nugatory. He would almost certainly have enjoyed it.
The deeper point is that Buckley represents an ideal that Lemmerly is, in its modest way, trying to serve: the belief that vocabulary is not a party trick but a precision instrument. That the right word, in the right place, does something no approximation can.
Find your level. Then raise it.