Savouring the words of Dr Frank 

If I’m not mistaken, this is the second time A Johnsen has written to complain about the level of vocabulary used by some contributors to this column, most notably the irrepressible Dr Frank. As a native speaker of (American) English and a veteran of 31 years of teaching English, mostly in overseas American and international schools, I’ve always thought I had a fairly decent English vocabulary. But Dr Frank puts me to shame. I read his letters mainly to savour his vocabulary, which is truly awesome. But I deplore his bilious, over-the-top abuse of the unfortunate Nigel Pike, and once again implore him to mellow out and Be Nice to Nigel.
My pride in my vocabulary was humbled to encounter three words that I had never previously seen, in the good Doctor’s letter of December 20 (“Let me take you on a tour of a white supremacist’s mind”):  “obnubilate”, “rantallian”, and “alveolate”.  “Alveolate” means having pits or cavities, like a honeycomb.  I couldn’t find the other two words even in my superhumongous “Webster’s Encyclopaedic Unabridged Dictionary” of 1,854 pages. But since the context is one of Dr Frank’s usual excoriations of Mr Pike, I think we may safely infer that both meanings are bad. “Rantallian” sounds like a variation of “ranting”.
May I suggest that A Johnsen might use this column, as I do, to enrich his vocabulary. Here a thesaurus would be helpful. I recommend Roget’s. It would have told him that, among the words that bother him, “egregious” means flagrant, “pernicious” means injurious or vile, “redolent” means suggestive,  “blithely” means cheerfully, “venom” means poison, “bereft of” means without or lacking, and “opprobrium” means criticism or disgrace. Roget’s does not have “genuflecting,” but it means bending the knee in reverence.
Readers who don’t have a thesaurus can usually figure out the approximate meaning of a word by looking at its context. Whenever Dr Frank is writing about Nigel Pike, the words he uses are almost always insulting. But Nigel can take comfort in the words of Jesus Christ, who said,  “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you ... Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.” (Matthew 5:11-12.)  As for Dr Frank, I would caution him that excessive production of bile might damage his system, and then we would be deprived of his marvellous vocabulary.
On Mr Johnsen’s second problem, his inability to find copies of The Nation in Hua Hin, I sympathise. I live in Samut Prakan, and I solved this problem by subscribing. My copy of The Nation shows up unfailingly in my mailbox around 6.30 every morning. I don’t know if Hua Hin offers this amenity, but if so, I recommend it.
I would recommend it even more enthusiastically if they would only bring the goddamned comics back.
Ye Olde Pedant