Sesquipedalian
(ses-kwip-i-dey-lee-uhn)
This word just cropped up in a piece I was reading, written by Caitlin Moran in the Times, and it’s one I’ve never heard of before. So as usual, I turned straight to my Dictionary app to look up what it actually means. In the article it was used to describe Boris Johnson and to show the context here’s the complete paragraph:-
‘In all, Monday’s broadcast was notable for merely two things. The first was Johnson’s palpable lack of brio in wheeling out the old “Stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives” slogan. When the time came for him to say it, he looked as weary as Thom Yorke from Radiohead when announcing that, yes, the song the band will be playing next is Creep. And the second was Johnson’s coining of a phrase to describe where Britain is in its coronavirus journey. “We are entering the last phase of the struggle,” the prime minister said, staring into the camera. Perhaps it’s the fundamental problem with having a posh, sesquipedalian fanny-hound as our national leader, but, to me, the sentence sounded hauntingly likely to be how Johnson also describes his sexual climax.’
The dictionary definition is:-
1 given to using long words
2 (of a word) containing many syllables.
Personally, I couldn’t help but love the irony but maybe that’s just me……..