Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
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
Even if they think they know it, most folk use it wrong. Most folk say “sentient” when they really mean “sapient”.
You should have told them “a copious amount” is when you have a surfeit of something, or a plethora.
http://www.rebekkahniles.com/2012/03/word-box-sapience-vs-sentience.html
I like the word makade-mashkikiwaaboo for coffee. (That’s the “standard” way of writing it, but Ojibwe is mostly an oral language and people who just write it the way they hear it might write muckadaymashkeekiwabu. You’ll probably do a better job of pronouncing it if you use that spelling.)
It literally means black medicine water. Winona LaDuke (an Ojibwe woman who once ran for vice president on a ticket with Ralph Nader) has a shop where she sells the beans used to make it, but I don’t know if she uses the Ojibwe word in her advertising. (One of my sisters runs into her now and then — they share some of the same “activist” interests.)
The makade part means black, and forms part of several place names in the Algonquian-language areas of North America. For example, there is a Lake Macatawa and a Macatawa River in Michigan. I think at times it has been known as the Black River, but there is also another Black River.
The Sauk leader Black Hawk was known as Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak in his own language. The Makatai part means black, and the “meshe” is cognate with Michigan and Mississippi. The meaning and pronunciation varies slightly from one Algonquian language to another, but it roughly means “big.”
In the Mesquaki (Fox) language the “t” becomes “th”: Makathai.
That’s handy knowledge to have if you want to annoy people. But one of the best words for annoying family members is “waawaashkeshi.”
For example, in driving along rural southwest Michigan roads (or even not such rural roads) it’s important for everyone to watch for deer. But rather than point and say “deer!” I like to point and say, “waawaashkeshi!” Or if there are several of them in the ditch, ready to run across the road, “waawaashkeshiwag.” It’s a noun of the animate gender, so plurals take the “wag” ending. Passengers in the car with me don’t often seem to be interested in those finer points.
Oh, a wise guy, eh?
Which I had.
It was my opening sentence in an essay on Huck Finn, that the Mississipi river took on the role of a sentient being.
Which I used correctly, since rivers don’t normally feel anything.
That’s impressive. I learned it probably 45 years ago and have not had a chance to use it.
Yeah, he prolly corrects people when they mispronounce mischievous as mischievious, as in rhymes with devious.
Sometimes, we want to convey something without getting slapped or, perhaps, violating the CoC, so there are words such as callipygian.
OK, had to look that up but I laughed out loud. Particularly since Google presented an image of “Venus Callipyge.”
One I remember from my early reading was the nickname of an ancestor: Robert the Munificent.
I like the companion word to callipygian, bathykolpian. Also, in my line of work, sequelae is a good one to use as well.
Related somewhat to sapient is sagacity.
In high school I coined the phrase Promethium Sulphide, and it took off among a (very) small group of immature smart-alecks.
I’m timing how long it takes one of you to get the joke.
Another I learned young is quillon or quillions. Not sure how many besides @percival will know that one.
Here’s one of my favorites – Defenestration – it means to throw a person or thing out of a window.
Happens often in Prague, I hear.
No no. One could just chalk that up as snooty upper-class pronunciation, like aluminium.
I rarely correct snoots.
A buddy of mine and I used “Sodium” since the abbreviation was Na, which stood for…callipygian. Similar idea, I suspect.
I learned that one along with ricasso and choil.
Ever watched any of Shad’s videos?
He’s a bit windy, but fun.
A few weeks back the associate pastor was doing a bit at church where he was supposed to act all stuffy and over-educated and use really long words. (Which, if you know him, is hilarious.) I was working on the technical team that day, so after the rehearsal I said to him “So you’re supposed to be sesquipedalian?” First time I’ve ever had a chance to use that word in conversation. That was a new word for him, but he went on to use it in the routine.
Russia, too. Here is something I recently tweeted on the subject:
.
I like it…
Matriculations!
I checked the Italian-English translation of “ricasso” once.
It means “ricasso.”
Micturations!
Mastication!
Playing hangman with our 5 year old, she chose a 2 letter word. After she denies A,E,I,O,and U, we tell her it has to have a vowel! Her word? TV.
We also tried from then on not to talk down to our daughter. It paid off.
You generally hit someone with a quillon when you are performing a Mordschlag, unless you misjudge the distance and hit him with the pommel instead.
I don’t think that means what you think it means. But considering his channel is called Shadiversity, it will do.
Machicolations!
I second mastication and defenestration.
Rhinotillexomania: Compulsive nose picking.
Kalsarikanni: A Finnish word meaning, “The act of getting drunk at home in one’s underwear with no intention of going out.”
Special mention goes to squirrel, the longest monosyllabic word in the English language