Brilliant Chutzpah: A Job Seeker's Love Letter to Words

When Academy Award-winning screenwriter Robert Pirosh was first looking for a job at a Hollywood studio in 1934, he penned the following vocabulary-rich missive, which we found featured on Shaun Usher's blog Letters of Note. ("I Like Words" also appears in Usher's new book of the same name.)

An example of brilliant chutzpah, it's too good not to repost here with annotations to each word's definition. We've even transformed it into a Vocabulary List: "I Like Words: A Job Seeker's Brilliant Chutzpah."

Dear Sir:

I like words. I like fat buttery words, such as ooze, turpitude, glutinous, toady. I like solemn, angular, creaky words, such as straitlaced, cantankerous, pecunious, valedictory. I like spurious, black-is-white words, such as mortician, liquidate, tonsorial, demi-monde. I like suave "V" words, such as Svengali, svelte, bravura, verve. I like crunchy, brittle, crackly words, such as splinter, grapple, jostle, crusty. I like sullen, crabbed, scowling words, such as skulk, glower, scabby, churl. I like Oh-Heavens, my-gracious, land's-sake words, such as tricksy, tucker, genteel, horrid. I like elegant, flowery words, such as estivate, peregrinate, elysium, halcyon. I like wormy, squirmy, mealy words, such as crawl, blubber, squeal, drip. I like sniggly, chuckling words, such as cowlick, gurgle, bubble and burp.

I like the word screenwriter better than copywriter, so I decided to quit my job in a New York advertising agency and try my luck in Hollywood, but before taking the plunge I went to Europe for a year of study, contemplation and horsing around.

I have just returned and I still like words.

May I have a few with you?

Robert Pirosh
385 Madison Avenue
Room 610
New York
Eldorado 5-6024

Not every piece of good writing needs to show off the depth and breadth of its author's vocabulary, but it's always fun when it does. Check out examples from David Foster Wallace, Nadine Gordimer, Karen Joy Fowler, and other writers whose word choices are profiled in our regular Vocabulary Shout-Out.