What are examples of diction in the first chapter of The Scarlet Letter?

We can begin to assess
the narrator'sin the very first paragraph of the chapter. He says,

A throng of bearded men, in sad-coloured garments and grey steeple-crowned hats,
inter-mixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a
wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron
spikes.

We would refer to this level of diction as
"standard": it is a higher level of diction than conversational,
what we might hear in everyday conversation, and lower than elevated, which
refers to language that is generally thought of as so sacred that we rarely, if ever, change it.
For example, the narrator uses throng instead of
group, a more conversational word, and steeple-crowned
instead of pointy. Further, he uses edifice instead of
building and studded instead of
covered. Word choices like these indicate that the narrator is using a
higher or more formal level of diction than the language that we use to speak casually to one
another.

The...