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Sesquipedalia: What’s Your Favorite Big Word?
I have always loved words. The bigger or more abstruse or obsolete, the better they are. When I was perhaps twelve, I discovered a wonderful word: Sinistrorotatory. What’s it mean? Same as widdershins. Wait, you don’t know that one either? Lævorotatory. Still not helping? Well, let’s break it apart.
Rotatory means spinning. Sinistro comes from the Latin word for left, sinister (Hi, @randywebster!). So that means it is rotating to the left, or counter-clockwise or anti-clockwise. Yes, there are five fun terms for the same thing. I love the English language. Do you?
What are some of your favorite word discoveries? Know any good long ones you might help add to our vocabularies?
Published in Group Writing
Smiles.
And we all know that left-handers are sinister. Doubly so when they studied law.
This conversation is an entry in our Group Writing Series under this month’s theme of The Power of Words. If you want to stop me from posting another thread like this, you should probably go to our schedule and sign-up sheet and sign up for one of the blank dates. Your fellow Ricochetoisie will appreciate it.
That’s your favorite big word? 😉
Monosyllabic.
There’s a mile between each ‘s’.
Brevity is … wit.
I am amazed when I use a word I think is simple and people don’t know what it means.
That’s delicious. I had never thought about the dichotomy between the meaning of the word and the word itself before.
You seem to already know the word “simple”. What word did you think was the word “simple”?
One of the things I love about the Aubrey-Maturin books is the use of obscure and delightful words with no explanation. Even my Kindle dictionary is perplexed when it comes to some of them.
Kinda like one of Conrad Black’s op-eds.
Any in particular that come to mind?
Antidisestablishmentarianism. I had a legitimate chance to use it here on the site a year or two back, and I’ve been kicking myself since. I learned it about 50 years ago, and I’ll never get another chance.
Like? I know there are both nautical and food terms used. (Lobscouse, for instance.)
Not easily, no.
My late mother-in-law introduced me to “sesquipedalian.” It refers to long words, and means “a foot and a half long.”
Phobias are always good for a laugh.
Arachibutyrophobia.
Triskadekaphobia.
Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia.
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.
Somniarachnofaophobia. (I’m not sure that the official name. I used Google Translate to come up with it.)
Etc.
The Wordsworth Book of Intriguing Words has a whole chapter devoted to long words, and another devoted to interesting phobias.
https://www.amazon.com/Book-Intriguing-Words-Wordsworth-Reference/dp/1853263125
It was on a thread about the GOPe. Someone used establishmentarian in a comment, someone else replied with disestablishmentarian and it was just hanging there like a big fat grapefruit waiting for me to swing. And I didn’t.
And yes, unlikely that will happen again.
Tmesis.
Alas, no. I am trying to remember, but I don’t use big words on purpose, just the best word for the moment.
That is so sad.
Syzygy. Great for playing hangman. Same with lynx, for that matter.
That’s a whole nother kettle of fish.
Same here, but experience is slowly eroding my tendency to overrate the average intelligence. Or my own intelligence, for that matter.
I had no idea “dotard” was so obscure.
[Mom brag up ahead] One of my favorite moments as a mother came when my oldest, then about 3, was reading with his grandmother, my mother-in-law.
“Do you know what a pantry is?” she asked him, afraid he might not know this unfamiliar word. “Oh yes,” he replied, “it’s similar to a larder.”
I try not to talk down to my children.
I ran into that once with copious, talking to two people, neither of whom knew it. They asked me what it meant and it took me a moment to come up with a synonym, because I had known it so long that for me, copious means copious.
Well, if the people you were speaking with were in their dotage, they may not have remembered the word.
I used the word “Sentient” any at the time, before Star Trek: TNG, even my English Teacher did not know what it meant.
Reminds me of a word with the same beginning: copacetic. Had a teacher who used it often, “Is everything copacetic?”
That’s one you’ll learn reading science fiction.