Friday, June 09, 2006

Big Crafty words and others

Mary, this is a word-of-the-day for you...
Deb, you might like it, too.
I'm not sure I'll be working it into a sentence any time soon, but every once in a while, I'll let a big word slip, too. As a public service, I've added a "Word of the Day" to the crowded sidebar. Just doing my part to make this blog educational and serve the greater good (plus, the "funny" quotes weren't all that funny). I like to use "penultimate" and today I've defined "superfluous" for fun. What big words do you use?

Sesquipedalian \ses-kwuh-puh-DAYL-yuhn\, adjective:
1. Given to or characterized by the use of long words.
2. Long and ponderous; having many syllables.

noun:
1. A long word.

. . .her eccentric family's addiction to sesquipedalians (that big word for "big words"), and her furtive passion for flossy mail-order-catalog prose.
-- David Browne, "Books/The Week", Entertainment Weekly, October 23, 1998

(That's a different use of "flossy" than I'm familiar with. I'm more comfortable with "As I was cross-stitching, I made a mistake that I had to rip out. Now my floor is all flossy."

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