My Sesquipedalian and I

I like words. I think they’re nifty. In fact, I consider myself to be quite a logophile. In my spare time I have been known to read the dictionary. I have a thesaurus right next to my computer. I love looking up words, and reading the list of synonyms; I relish the feeling of precision of knowing exactly what this word means, and knowing the precise word to fit this meaning. I find great pleasure in the shades of meaning between argument, quarrel, squabble, dispute, contretemps and skirmish. And I absorb vocabulary; it becomes a part of me to the extent that loquacious, sesquipedalian, and effervescent are a part of my vernacular.

I consider my language to be my primary source of self-expression; the way I use and put words together defines me. Where some people communicate themselves by the clothes they wear, or the sports they play I try and speak with eloquence. My goal is not to confuse or impress, however, it is to confess. Thus I am quite distressed when people do not know the meaning of the word I use. It simply does not occur to me, unless I think about it, that most people just don’t know what a palimpsest is.

These misunderstandings quite distress me, for one thing, my goal really is to be clear and concise. I swear. But, also, I think that people think I’m arrogant, that I’m using big words just to impress. And I do hate this. I hate it when I hear (or see) someone force a beautiful word into a sentence where it doesn’t quite belong or, worse yet, just completely skewer the word. I use words as tools, as art, but not to inflate myself. And I don’t want to be misinterpreted!

Now, like many things, I have a specific example. The other day in my American literature class we were discussing what it means to be an American. And, predictably, people were coming up with some silly, saccharine sayings such as “to be American is to be free!” Now I by no means hate the United States of America. Overall it seems to be a pretty groovy place when compared with, say, Malaysia, but I get so fed up with the hero worship. The U.S. is not a perfect place! This country has many significant flaws with its culture! So I raised my hand in class and exercised my right to free speech and said some things along the lines of “I have always seen American culture as xenophobic and sensationalistic!”

This, of course, got some people’s goats (I need to stop stealing people’s goats, I’m running out of room in my dorm.), and one guy responded by complaining about my diction! He said something like “just because you use fancy words doesn’t make it true!” This is a college classroom! Aren’t exotic words to be expected?

Oh well. I guess I’m just going to move past my rage and rhapsodize about words for a while.

I really like the word maverick. It’s a pretty common word, but most people just know it’s primary definition of rebel. It has a secondary, slightly archaic meaning of an unbranded calf. See, Maverick was originally the name of a man who refused to brand his cows! Isn’t etymology cool? But whenever I use, or hear someone else use, maverick I have an urge to make a pun involving this secondary definition. Sadly, most people don’t get it.

I also really like defenestration. It’s a great, overly specific, perfectly useless word. It means the act of throwing something out of a window. It has a specific reference to English history, where someone in parliament got thrown out of a window, but it can be used more generally. I’m just not sure how. It’s a noun. Maybe if someone kept throwing eggs at you from the safety of their house you could yell at them in ire, “Stop with the defenestration already!”

Defenestration makes me think of another fairly useless word, floccinaucinihilipilification, which is the longest non-technical word in the English language. (Antidisestablishmentarianism is the longest non-coined word.) Floccinaucinihilipilification means the act of coming to the conclusion that something is not worthwhile. Like defenestration it is a noun and thus has limited usage, however if one were to mutate it into other parts of speech I could see it having quite the plethora of uses. “That floccinaucinihilipilificator!” “I’m tried of all this floccinaucinihilipilification!”
It’s up to you how to pronounce the thing.

And for the record, antidisestablishmentarianism refers to the movement against the movement to get rid of the Church of England’s status as the state church in the 1800’s. I don’t like these sorts of words, as they have very specific context.

Before I quit this behemoth of a post I would like to point out that while I adore playing with entire words and sentences I do not take the same joy with parts of words. My spelling is horrendous and I hate games like scrabble and boggle.