I wasn't thinking of a big long list. I envisage a project more like The Quintessential Dictionary: https://www.amazon.com/quintessential-dictionary-I-Moyer-Hun...

It's an amusing work of high-vocabulary words with an excerpt from actual usage with the definition and etymology. Catamite, for example, is memorably demonstrated with, I believe, the opening sentence of Anthony Burgess's "Earthly Powers":

"It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."