Six Big Adjectives in Search of a Noun

From today's NYTimes: "John G. Roberts is an erudite, Harvard-trained, Republican corporate-lawyer-turned-judge, with a punctilious, pragmatic view of the law."

How many adjectives can dance on the head of a Supreme Court nominee?

punctilious: adj. Attentive to the finer points of etiquette and formal conduct. Precise; scrupulous. (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 1969) Comes from Italian, puntiglio, meaning "fine point, quibble," which is the diminutive of Italian punto, "point," which in turn comes from Latin punctum for "pricked hole, point," out of the Latin verb pungere, "to prick, pierce."

erudite: adj. Deeply learned. Comes from a Latin verb meaning "to take the roughness out of." (Roberts' father was a plant manager for Bethlehem Steel, an executive. Roberts grew up rich.)

pragmatic: adj. Dealing with facts or actual occurrences; practical. Active rather than contemplative. Pertaining to the study of events and historical phenomena with emphasis on their practical outcome. From two Greek words, meaning, roughly, "to do deeds."

Harvard-trained: adj. Embued with a sense of entitlement.

Republican: adj. Bedewed with self-righteousness.

corporate-lawyer-turned-judge: adj. Having been exposed to emotional hardening, insensitivity, and a lack of fellow-feeling, though not necessarily subject thereby to those attitudes.