When novelist John Updike passed away last month, he left behind more than a shelf of best-sellers filled with sharp wit. His ability to constantly surprise his readers by gently nestling five-dollar words into otherwise commonplace sentences, like Easter eggs hidden in plain view, revealed his immeasurable passion for the language.

While my copy of Assorted Prose has long been etched with lead, always prodding me to grab a dictionary, some of these words are those I've
just tripped over while perusing the volumes of Updike kept on the
second floor of USC's Doheny library stacks. There, housed in a book-lined bomb shelter, these words hang together: either
well-worn and barely bound or stamped in stiff pages, awaiting unwitting discovery.

So I've compiled a vocabulary lesson for you: a dozen gems and one
peculiar saying, as defined by Oxford Reference Online, that Updike
used with precision.

In some cases he lends contextual clues and even seems to recreate the process of learning new words.

Elsewhere he makes fluid use of foreign or technical words. And through
the fictional mouth of his doppelganger Henry Bech, Updike uses archaic language and engages in subtle wordplay.

You may know a few of these words, but even if none of them could stump
you on the GRE, you might enjoy this refresher course, taught here
through the sentences of one of America's finest voices.

Byzantine
adj. of a rich and highly decorated artistic and architectural style
which developed in the Byzantine Empire and spread to Italy, Russia,
and elsewhere.

"As part of a proper upbringing she visited museums: the treasure house
on the top of Fairmount felt like a great marble bank [...]; the more
churchly--Daddy said "Byzantine"--Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
had long stairs rising up between the two frightening big canvases by
Benjamin West." (from Seek My Face, 2002)
   
Foliate
adj. decorated with leaves or leaf-like motifs.

"The metalwork is less foliate than we expected--indeed, there's not a
leafy line in it." (from "Métro Gate" (January 1959) in Assorted Prose,
1965)

Yclept
adj. (archaic) by the name of.
 
Parturition
noun. (formal) or (technical) the action of giving birth to young; childbirth.

"Now Updike, still stubbornly north of Boston, resides in a remote
corner of a drab burg yclept Beverly, distinguished chiefly for having
allegedly been the birth place of the American Navy (a painful
parturition, no doubt, with all those masts and anchor chains)." (from
"Henry Bech interviews Updike apropos of his fifteenth novel" in More
Matter, 1999)

Corpuscles
noun (Biology) a minute body or cell in an organism, especially a red or white cell in the blood of vertebrates.

Macrophage
noun (Physiology) a large phagocytic cell found in stationary form in
the tissues or as a mobile white blood cell, especially at sites of
infection.

"Oh, kill, kill, kill, I think, watching the filth / strap itself in,
exhaling airport beer / and nasal exchanges of professional dirt, /
these fat corpuscles in the nation's bloodstream: / oh, would I were a
flying macrophage / to eat them all" (from "The Overhead Rack" in
Americana, 2001)

Loggia
noun. a gallery or room with one or more open sides, especially one
that forms part of a house and has one side open to the garden.
ORIGIN mid 18th cent.: from Italian, 'lodge'.

"I climbed, saw sky, felt a breeze, and emerged into the loggia that
tops St. Peter's dome." (from "Mea culpa: a travel note" in Assorted
Prose, 1965)

Supplicate
verb. ask or beg for something earnestly or humbly.
DERIVATIVES supplicant adjective & noun supplication noun supplicatory adjective.

"Van Horne held his rubbery strange hands open in a supplicatory
fashion, arguing with Jenny, and they did look the very tableau of a
married couple." (from The Witches of Eastwick, 1984)

Tahr
noun. a goat-like mammal inhabiting cliffs and mountain slopes in Oman, southern India, and the Himalayas.

"A tahr (Hermitragus jemlaicus) pleasantly squinting in the sunlight."

(from "Central Park" (March 1956) in Assorted Prose, 1965)

Retsina
noun. a Greek white wine flavoured with resin.

"'We all had martinis and retsina and got pretty well smashed.'" (from Rabbit Redux, 1971)

Houri
noun (pl. houris) a beautiful young woman, especially one of the virgin companions of the faithful in the Muslim Paradise.

Pudendum
noun (pl. pudenda /-d/) a person's external genitals, especially a woman's.

"At the center of a symmetrical web of walks stood a bandstand and a
monument to the two Federalist Presidents, Washington and Adams, with a
pair of night-gowned beauties who were not Martha and Abigail but the
abstract houris of the Republic, Liberty and Equality, in these fallen
times much decorated with polychrome graffiti, spray-painted pudenda."
(from Memories of the Ford Administration, 1992)
   
Batten down, to
to secure the openings in the deck and sides of a vessel when heavy weather is forecast.

"Minutes later, several of the elderly poor battened down in their
partitioned little rooms, with only television for a friend, mistake
the approaching sirens for a hurricane alert." (from Rabbit at Rest,
1990)

Don't even consider writing a Great American
Novel until this list has been memorized. Sure, you may only use
"tahr" if your hero visits the Central Park Zoo, and if your heroine is
an Angeleno she'll seldom have cause to batten down. But you, yourself,
when faced with a biology exam, may find the poem about corpuscles and
macrophage to serving well e as a mnemonic device., Aand should you
visit a friend's new home and there enter a garden-facing room, you can
confidently exclaim, "I love what you've done with your loggia!"