Dear Editor,

Some decades ago I happened upon — for the very first and last time - the word "psephologist".

The single occasion arose from the pen of Wilmot Perkins, who at the time wrote a column for the business weekly, Money Index.

The particular Perkins piece was a scathing commentary on some aspect of the work of renowned pollster, Carl Stone, referred to throughout not as pollster, but as "psephologist".

Given the general tenor of the commentary my initial instinct was that the hitherto utterly unknown 12-letter word must have been some kind of sanitised curse word.

My trusty Oxford shortly disabused me of any such notion. It advised simply that a psephologist is a person who engages in "the statistical study of elections and trends in voting".

Thus, it was plain that Wilmot Perkins' use of the elegant 12-letter rarity was indeed apt. But from what obscure, scholarly tome did he get it?

Verily, "the great man" wielded a mighty pen, powered by a mighty vocabulary.

Delano Harrison

109 Tower Street

Kingston

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