Following are the answers to the sesquipedalian challenges printed in Word Focus Newsletter #13. I forgot to include this information in newsletter #14, but it appears that no one cared because it was not brought to my attention by anyone! A few people wrote with their interpretations (some correct, some incorrect) or requested a translation and they received the following personal message:
“While bryophytic plants are typically encountered as substrata of earthly or mineral matter in concreted state, discrete substrata elements occasionally display a roughly spherical configuration which, in the presence of suitable gravitational and other effects, lends itself to a combined translatory and rotational motion. One notices in such cases an absence of the otherwise typical accretion of bryophyta. ”
The proverb: “A rolling stone gathers no moss.”
What was a young man saying to a young woman in the following sesquipedalian?
They shine more rutilent than ligulin—those labial components that surround thy pericranial orifice, wherein denticulations niveous abound!
Commingle them with my equivalents! Let like with like nectareously converge! From the predestined confluence some sempiternal rapture must emerge!
As Willard Espy put it, “After all, he was only asking her for a kiss. Jargon may be useful to hide one’s real thinking, or lack of it, but it can be downright self-defeating if you are trying to persuade somebody to do something. A young man learned that when he addressed these words to the maiden he loved, only to be shown the door.”
Both of the previous sesquipedalians were written by Willard Espy.
There are many more Sesquipedalia Verba or “Sesquipedalians in Action”, AKA “Verba Obscura” that are available (if you are a supporting/contributing subscriber) at the Latin-Greek Search Area If you are not a “supporter”, you will find information about being a supporter and being able to access thousands of English words from Latin and Greek elements by going to this subscription page.
The following is one of several additional sesquipedalians available and explained from the Latin-Greek Cross-References Search area which is available to paying subscribers.
Of little value his compunctions
Who assumes clavinous functions
When once from circumambient pen,
Is snatched its equine denizen.
Related to the subject of sesquipedalians is an article I saved from page 9 of the December 7, 2000, issue of the International Herald Tribune: Clueless in Syntax (Or, Ruining English)
LONDON—The Plain English Campaign named a record 11 gobbledygook winners—from the Ministry of Defense to an Internet provider—who mangled their mother tongue and left readers utterly confused.
The organization pointed the finger of blame at lawyers and financial companies as the worst offenders.
Tonbridge Borough Council was mocked for a tree preservation order “a copy whereof together with the map included therein is enclosed herewith.”
An award went to Hollywood star Alicia Silverstone who said, “I think that the film ‘Clueless’ was very deep, I think it was deep in the way that it was very light. I think lightness has to come from a very deep place if it’s true lightness.”
If you would like to have a generator of gobbledygook sentences, visit the Plain English generator site and look at their other pages while you are there; that is, if you are interested in knowing more about gobbledygook.
