Where it sits
Horace's whole point is that the right-hand pole costs you the audience's heart.
Tell it apart
| Aspect | Sesquipedalian | Laconic |
|---|---|---|
| Word count | High | Minimal |
| Named after | A measurement | A region |
| Effect on audience | Distance | Impact |
| Horace's preference | — | This one |
Sesquipedalian measures words by the foot; laconic measures them by how few survive. The Spartans' terseness against Horace's stilts — and Horace himself sided with brevity.
Opposite of Sesquipedalian
- LaconicUsing very few words; the terse speaker against the long-worded one.
What it doesn't mean
In context he is giving STAGECRAFT ADVICE to tragic playwrights. His exiled, impoverished heroes must drop the swollen diction if the audience is to feel anything. It is a note on register, not a jibe at pedants.
Its first English life, in the 1610s, was LITERAL AND PHYSICAL — a thing a foot and a half long. The word-length meaning is a later figure, borrowed back from Horace's phrase.
What it really means
Latin sesquipedalis: sesqui- (one and a half times) plus the stem of pes (foot). A foot and a half long.
The phrase is Horace's, from the Ars Poetica — sesquipedalia verba, words a foot and a half long — and the context is almost always dropped when the word is quoted.
Horace is not mocking pedants. He is giving stagecraft advice to writers of tragedy. His argument is about register: a hero who is poor and in exile, if he speaks in swollen, magnificent diction, will fail to move anybody. The grandeur of the language will hold the audience at exactly the distance the scene needs to close.
So the passage is not long words are pretentious. It is something more useful: the size of your language should match the size of the moment, and a character at their lowest should not sound like a monument.
The English career of the word is funnier than the Latin. Its first appearance, in the 1610s, is as a noun, and it is entirely literal — a person or thing a foot and a half long. The adjective for words follows in the 1650s, and the sense an excessively long word only in 1830.
Which means the noun spent over two centuries — 1610s to 1830 — meaning approximately eighteen inches and nothing to do with vocabulary at all, long after the adjective had turned to words in the 1650s.
The reason it outlived every plainer synonym is obvious once said. Sesquipedalian is itself sesquipedalian — six syllables to say uses long words, which is either the best joke in the dictionary or the worst offence in it, depending on your position.
The same instinct produced the fear. Sesquipedalophobia is the term for a fear of long words; the joke-form, built to be as painful as possible, is hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia.
Where it comes from
Latin — one and a half times (a contraction of semis-que, 'and a half')
Latin — foot
The same sesqui- is behind SESQUICENTENNIAL. The image is a physical measurement applied to vocabulary.
- Horace, Ars Poetica
The source phrase: sesquipedalia verba — the tragic hero in exile throws away his bombast and his foot-and-a-half-long words if he wants to touch the audience's heart.
- 1610s
First English use, as a NOUN meaning a person or thing a foot and a half long. The adjective for words follows in the 1650s, and the 'excessively long word' sense in 1830.
In real life
- His sesquipedalian emails used utilise where use would do and notwithstanding where nobody needed it.
- Sesquipedalian is itself a sesquipedalian word, which is the joke.
- The professor's lectures were brilliant, if sesquipedalian; students kept a dictionary open on their laps.
Questions
Q01Is 'sesquipedalian' itself sesquipedalian?
Yes — it is self-exemplifying, which is a large part of why it survived when its synonyms did not.
Q02What did Horace actually say?
Sesquipedalia verba — 'foot-and-a-half-long words' — in a passage advising tragic playwrights to abandon bombast if they want the audience to feel anything.
Q03What is the fear of long words called?
Sesquipedalophobia, with the deliberately absurd joke-form hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia.