I am going to add an occasional category to entries in Reckonings: words I encounter which intrigue me and whose meaning is unfamiliar to me. I shall generally not include words that are synonymous with those that are merely synonyms for others more commonly used; that feels unfair.
Readers interested in the dictionaries I use: the far superior but occasionally overwhelming Oxford English Dictionary, and the more pedestrian but still useful Merriam-Webster (which has a "word of the day" service that appears primarily to prove how much it knows). Both are available online. The OED subscription is expensive, so I'm happy to report that I have access from home (i.e., via the internet) gratis through membership in the Mill Valley Public Library.
Here is an example drawn from an article about Donald Trump in The Washington Post. Its identity below is, yes, from that Merriam-Webster "word of the day," written before I realized what M-W was doing with its word-of-the-day...
Sequacious ("intellectually servile") wheedled its way into our top lookups on August 6th, 2018, through its appearance in an article in The Washington Post.
There, he [Donald Trump] decided to unfurl an inventory of the “the guys that we love” — that is, Fox News stars who support his cause, whatever that cause is. After plowing through some names — including Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, Maria Bartiromo, “the great Lou Dobbs” and the incomparably sequacious Steve Doocy of “Fox & Friends — Trump caught himself: “I’m in trouble, ’cause I know I left out probably 10,” he said.
—Erik Wemple, The Washington Post, 6 Aug. 2018
Sequacious (which, in case you were wondering, is never used as a compliment), may be traced back to the Latin sequax (which means "inclined to follow"). The word dates to the first half of the 17th century; our earliest citation is from Edward Reynold's 1640 beach-read A Treatise of the Passions and Faculties of the Soule of Man With the Severall Dignities and Corruptions Thereunto Belonging. In addition to "intellectually servile," sequacious has a secondary meaning, which is "subservient." This sense is now considered archaic, and little used.
Remove the Occasions of it, withdraw Fuell from so catching a Flame. They say of Turpentine, and some other like things. That they will draw and sucke Fire unto them. Certainely of all Fire there is none so ductile, so sequacious and obsequious, as this of Wrath.
—Edward Reynolds A Treatise of the Passions and Faculties of the Soule of Man With the Severall Dignities and Corruptions Thereunto Belonging, 1640.