The Old Man's Word Power

The Old Man has an interesting command of language. A friend of his once accused him of having "an overactive thesaurus".

So this morning he is reciting chunks of his daily paper to me - as he frequently does. And I say: "So what did so-and-so do before he did that?"

Old Man says: "He was a columnarist."
We both look at each other and start to snigger.
"What's that?" say I.
"Someone who writes about architecture." say quick as a flash Old Man.