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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
If it’s not Scottish, it’s crrrrrrrap.
Nice burrrrrr, laddie!
Is backronym in the dictionary?
http://www.dictionary.com/e/origin-of-the-f-word/
What’s another word for “Thesaurus”?
“Colporteur” is one of those oddly specific words.
The verb in question refers to breeding animals. Hence it was a derogatory term for licentious sexual activity characteristic of the “lower classes”. See also Dutch “fokken”.
Man, that’s weird. It combined two frames of quotation from earlier posts in the thread.
Let’s see…more words…
Vulpine, ovine, bovine, asinine, lapin…
Vivacious, scintillating, loquacious…
Oh, and lave.
Not long words, some of them, just a few that are more obscure than they deserve.
Just a new device you’re using that doesn’t act as you expect?
I used to be loquacious, but now I’m taciturn.
I was terse once.
I have been terse in verse.
Ah, a pauciloquent lyricist.
Minimal doggerel.
Once, in flight school, I was laconic.
This has all reminded me of how much I miss WFB.
This has all made me think I may have to go watch Firefly again.
Bruce lernt Deutsch. @arahant möchte helfen. Arahant ist ein lustiger Mann.
Meanwhile, Steven Wright just called and shook his head at me over the phone.
“pulchritude”
Sorry I missed that. I had elevator practice.
Callipygian
How about soupçon?
Not until later tonight.
I did. Sort of. Years ago. In a post when Troy suggested killing the Law Talk intro denoting Richard and John as “the x and y of…,” numerous appellations were suggested. Mine was “The Ontogeny and Phylogeny of Constitutional interpretation.”
I learned “pasquinade” recently. Maybe in Poe?
“Splendiferous” is always grandiose in a bacchanal kind of way.
Used in a sentence, (in a criticism of social Darwinism):
Feels like a B. Add some graphs and charts.
Does “bloviate” count? It’s a relative neologism, dating back only to the 1840’s according to Wiktionary, but I’m still fond of it.
Why not? If it was good enough for Warren G., it’s good enough for me.