Of Susquipedalians and Others

So, you see, it's NOT just me who sometimes has too much time on his hands! The BBC cannot be guiltless, either. On a day when Somali pirates (or heroes, depending on who's telling it) are threatening to blow up a ship filled with tanks headed for Kenya (or Sudan, again depending on who's telling it) if they don't get millions while most other Somalis starve and people are blowing themselves up all over the world and setting homeless people on fire in Los Angeles while the Dow plummets like a cliff diver in Mexico, there was a news feature on the BBC website which responded to an earlier question posed to its readers: "What is your favorite word?" The top fifty (there were more?) were reported, and I have provided the link for your edification (one of MY favorite words, btw!). Knowing how offbeat some British thinking is, John Cleese notwithstanding (another favourite, using the British spelling !), I figured I would know a couple of them but not many. I wasn't too far wrong...I think I knew about ten and recognized, maybe, another five. Sphygmomanometer I recognized as a medical tool, and termagant I knew because I've been acquainted with people like that. "Spelunking" was easy, and "Panglossian" was in the bag, having read Candide several times in the last year. Spiro Agnew (you have to be old to remember him) brought the word "Pusillanimous" into my lexicon when he called somebody or other that just before he, uh, resigned as Vice President (those were the days!)
Anyway, I'm not usually a sesquipedalian so I've avoided the hard ones. If your curiosity is piqued (another cool term), check out the URL below, and have some fun sprining them on unsuspecting friends!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7659954.stm