Here are some words I've never used before -- or seen before in combination. I gotta give credit to the politicians/media manipulators as their writers always scour the thesaurus for ways to paste, pillory or Helicobacter pylori their opponents.

Here's how the Sacramento Bee Capitol Alert sized up Assembly/Senate hearings on the non-budget: "Continuous bloviations." (Rough translation: to speak at great length.)

Even though I was a full-time religion reporter for the Fresno Bee for six years, I'd never heard of the tactic/term that Wiley Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, CA, was encouraging his congregants to use -- "imprecatory prayers," which the New York Times defined as pleas to God that he visit misfortune or death on some target. (In this case, Barry W. Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.)

And even if you don't recall the term Vice President Spiro T. Agnew used in 1970 to excoriate the media --- "nattering nabobs of negativism" --- (authored by speechwriter William T. Safire), you might still appreciate the head-butt that a Wall Street Journal editor delivered to the New York Times.

Said Robert Thomson: "The eschatological angst that characterizes much of the newspaper industry does not exist at Dow Jones. We don't have the fetid air of failure."

Looks like the rest of us word-poor mortals are simply hockey goalies without face masks.