Buckleyesque

English

Etymology

From William F. Buckley + -esque.

Adjective

Buckleyesque (comparative more Buckleyesque, superlative most Buckleyesque)

1. In the manner of conservative American intellectual William F. Buckley.
   • 1978, Mario Pei, Weasel words: the art of saying what you don't mean, page 95:

     Kilpatrick expresses some alarm at the fact that the Buckleyesque vocabulary shows signs of being contagious, citing the "celebrification" of the Columbia Journalism Review, and, worse yet, a piece on Patty Hearst composed by George Will (a columnist and conservative in his own right) to the effect that "Patty's arrest provided a coda to a decade of political infantilism, the exegesis of which could be comprehended as a manifestation of bourgeois Weltanschauung.

   • 2007, Juliana Geran Pilon, Why America is Such a Hard Sell: Beyond Pride and Prejudice, →ISBN, page 81:

     In deliciously Buckleyesque prose, former National Review (now known as NR) board member Neal B. Freeman reports in a memorable article, "NR Goes to War," published in the June 2006 issue of the American Spectator, his astonishment at his NR colleagues' abdication of independent judgment as they turned support for going to war against Saddam into a litmus test for patriotism.

   • 2014, Grace Elizabeth Hale, A Nation of Outsiders: How the White Middle Class Fell in Love with Rebellion in Postwar America, →ISBN, page 151:

     They spoke in “Buckleyesque syllogisms,” misused big words, and highlighted their points with “a Buckleyesque protrusion of the tongue.”