Context does not always reveal the meaning of a word and definitions don’t always come from a dictionary. When I was twelve, our family took a vacation that included a visit to Washington D.C. and a visit to the Supreme Court. Visitors were allowed in for a set period of time, perhaps fifteen minutes.
The Chief Justice was rendering a decision and he expressed the opinion that “this case is the quintessence of ambiguity.” To my adolescent ears, Mr. Vinson was being pretentious and pompous, using words that few people would understand. As soon as we got outside, I asked my father what those words meant, and he explained them to me. Dad was a high school dropout, but this did not impede his possession of a solid vocabulary.