Building a Better Vocabulary

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character of Molière’s 1666 play The Misanthrope. Alceste truly

does, as Shakespeare would have it, strut and fret his hour upon

the stage, captiously critiquing his fellow characters. He’s irascible

and splenetic.

z Another classic misanthrope, Lord Goring, is found in the play

$Q,GHDO+XVEDQG by Oscar Wilde. As his butler, Phipps, helps

him dress, Goring rather nicely sums up his own misanthropic

attitude: “Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society

is oneself.”

Supercilious (adjective)

Having a holier-than-thou attitude.

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tongues. Another wag whose trenchant wisecracks brought her

considerable fame was Dorothy Parker. Throughout the 1920s,

Parker wrote poems, stories, and satires for such magazines as

Vanity Fair and Vogue. She was even listed on the editorial board

when 7KH1HZ<RUNHU debuted in 1925.

z Although Parker was one of the most quick-witted and funniest

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thou attitude that we identify with the adjective supercilious.

z Groucho Marx once said of the Algonquian Round Table, a social

group to which Parker belonged, that “The price of admission is a

serpent’s tongue and a half-concealed stiletto.” Parker herself later

criticized the haughtiness of the group, writing, “The Round Table

was just a lot of people telling jokes and telling each other how

good they were. Just a bunch of loudmouths showing off, saving

their gags for days, waiting for a chance to spring them.”