Ben Zimmer,The Atlantic
The paeans to Tom Wolfe, who died on Monday at the age of 88, or inevitably extol (to praise, revere) his colorfully inventive utilize of language across his decades of fiction and nonfiction writing. As the modern York Times obituary observes,He had a pitiless eye and a penchant (a tendency, partiality, or preference) for spotting trends and then giving them names, some of whichlike Radical Chic' and the Me Decade'became American idioms.
Wolfe's contributions to the English language go far beyond the most obvious catchphrases that he popularized. The Oxford English Dictionary includes about 150 quotations from Wolfe's writings, and in many...
Source: realclearhistory.com