Wordsmith.org
Posted By: jmbodman Help with a word?! - 03/15/00 12:19 AM
I am trying to find the word for someone who likes to use big words ....it's not me .... :)


Thanks.

Posted By: scoutmd Re: Help with a word?! - 03/15/00 01:46 AM
How about sesquipedalian? It can be a noun or an adjective, and can mean a long word (OED Definition 1a), or a person given to using long words (OED Definition 1b). Incidentally, it is from Horace, _Verba Sesquipedalia_, which literally means words a foot and a half long.

Posted By: Dr. Death Re: Help with a word?! - 03/15/00 03:09 AM
"word-grubber" was an eighteenth-century slang term, according to Peter Bowler's excellent Superior Person's Book of Words (which also lists "sesquipedalian"). I'm more of a paranomasiac, myself...

Posted By: autopoesis Re: Help with a word?! - 03/15/00 09:51 AM
I quite like crytoscopopheliac (sp.?); but I've found only one reference to this word--in a book called The Mother Tongue : English & How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson. I remember is as defining one who has a fetish for looking through stranger's windows.

I like long words. And short replies.

Posted By: RonDavis Re: Help with a word?! - 03/15/00 11:18 PM
Never use a long word when a diminutive word will suffice.

Posted By: whalemeat Re: Help with a word?! - 03/16/00 05:45 AM
The word? 'Polysyllabilist' is another.

© Wordsmith.org