Words: ante-jentacular, adj.

TRY AS he might, A.N. Wilson cannot shake off the tag of Young Fogey with which he was dubbed by Alan Watkins in 1983. In God's Funeral, for example, natural instinct makes him relish the fact that the aged Jeremy Bentham could be seen on "What he called his `ante-jentacular' " strolls about Westminster, straw hat atop waist- length hair, somebody "the casual observer could have been forgiven for believing was a lunatic".

From the Latin for breakfast, the word was overlooked by Johnson and is quoted only from the beginning of the 18th and 19th centuries in the OED, which does not mention Bentham's healthy habit. It was to sustain him to the age of 84, which is rarely the result of pell-mell jogging and working breakfasts.