Journalist Henry Louis Mencken, the "Sage of Baltimore," was born September 12, 1880. His biting wit and way with words earned him spots at 119 entries in the Unabridged Dictionary. We've picked out 12 favorite examples of his words in context, but it's easy to see the whole list. Click on the Unabridged for your reference and click on Advanced Search. Type Mencken in the "Author Quoted" field and click on Search.
asinine adjective
"a man so asinine he looks for gratitude in this world"
bluenose noun
"once the bluenoses were in power, they put down all strong language with a brutal hand"
fidelity noun
"a profound reverence for and fidelity to the truth, sometimes almost amounting to fanaticism"
genealogize verb
"the grotesque genealogizing that decaying aristocracies affect"
he-man noun
"the great open spaces, where red-blooded he-men still roam"
high-octane adjective
"verbs produced by back-formation are usually challenged by high-octane purists"
lexicography noun
"a martyr, by my lexicography, is on all fours with a fool who risks and loses his life in any other showy but useless way"
pecksniffery noun
"the national pecksniffery"
repository noun
"theoretically the mob is the repository of all political wisdom and virtue"
tatterdemalion adjective
"the most tatterdemalion party ever seen in American politics"
whereas noun
"dilutes it with various discreet whereases"
wowser noun
"both were denounced as equally obscene by the . . . wowsers"
