That big word in the title literally means, "a foot and a half" and is the heading for a list of polysyllabic words in my new book, The Reading Teacher's Book of Lists. I'm a word-nerd who gets excited over things like this! I buy a minimum of 2 books annually for improving vocabulary...there's nothing that interests me more than language. Well, almost nothing...
Most of the words on the list are simply a combination of roots with which many of us would be familiar, but there were a couple of doozies:
hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia - fear of really long words
hyperpolysyllabicsesquipedalianist - one who enjoys using extremely long words
floccinaucinihilipilification - estimating something as useless (I cannot for the life of me figure the etymology of this word...I see roots that could mean hairy and wooly, and I see "nihil" but I'm obviously missing something!)
honorificabilitudinitatibus - the quality of being honorable (this word is actually used by Shakespeare in Love's Labors Lost)
philosophunculist - one who pretends to know more than he actually does
Most of the words on the list are simply a combination of roots with which many of us would be familiar, but there were a couple of doozies:
hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia - fear of really long words
hyperpolysyllabicsesquipedalianist - one who enjoys using extremely long words
floccinaucinihilipilification - estimating something as useless (I cannot for the life of me figure the etymology of this word...I see roots that could mean hairy and wooly, and I see "nihil" but I'm obviously missing something!)
honorificabilitudinitatibus - the quality of being honorable (this word is actually used by Shakespeare in Love's Labors Lost)
philosophunculist - one who pretends to know more than he actually does
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