Focusing on Words Newsletter #14
A newsletter that is dedicated to enhancing your English-vocabulary knowledge and skills!
Experience the wonder of words by focusing on the variety of vocabulary elements used in English with particular emphasis on those words that are derived from Latin and Greek sources.
Efforts will be made to produce this newsletter weekly, depending on circumstances. In other words, there will be a weekly Focusing on Words Newsletter unless I am away or overwhelmed with another priority project.
Senior Scribe, John Robertson
“Education is the only knowledge industry still asking whether modern technology should be part of the enterprise of learning. Astonishing!”
—George Fisher, Chairman of Eastman Kodak
“The finest words in the world are only vain sounds, if you cannot comprehend them.”
—Anatole France
Table of Contents
Explanation of the Sesquipedalians in Newsletter #13
Ponder These Quotations
Newsletter-Subscription Statistics
Links to all newsletters.
E-mail Form
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Following are the answers to the sesquipedalian challenges printed in Word Focus Newsletter #13. I forgot to include this information in newsletter #14, but it appears that no one cared because it was not brought to my attention by anyone! A few people wrote with their interpretations (some correct, some incorrect) or requested a translation and they received the following personal message:
“While bryophytic plants are typically encountered as substrata of earthly or mineral matter in concreted state, discrete substrata elements occasionally display a roughly spherical configuration which, in the presence of suitable gravitational and other effects, lends itself to a combined translatory and rotational motion. One notices in such cases an absence of the otherwise typical accretion of bryophyta. ”
The proverb: “A rolling stone gathers no moss.”
What was a young man saying to a young woman in the following sesquipedalian?
They shine more rutilent than ligulin—those labial components that surround thy pericranial orifice, wherein denticulations niveous abound!
Commingle them with my equivalents! Let like with like nectareously converge! From the predestined confluence some sempiternal rapture must emerge!
As Willard Espy put it, “After all, he was only asking her for a kiss. Jargon may be useful to hide one’s real thinking, or lack of it, but it can be downright self-defeating if you are trying to persuade somebody to do something. A young man learned that when he addressed these words to the maiden he loved, only to be shown the door.”
Both of the previous sesquipedalians were written by Willard Espy.
The following is one of several additional sesquipedalians available and explained from the Latin-Greek Cross-References Search area which is available free of charge.
Of little value his compunctions
Who assumes clavinous functions
When once from circumambient pen,
Is snatched its equine denizen.
Related to the subject of sesquipedalians is an article I saved from page 9 of the December 7, 2000, issue of the International Herald Tribune: Clueless in Syntax (Or, Ruining English)
LONDON—The Plain English Campaign named a record 11 gobbledygook winners—from the Ministry of Defense to an Internet provider—who mangled their mother tongue and left readers utterly confused.
The organization pointed the finger of blame at lawyers and financial companies as the worst offenders.
Tonbridge Borough Council was mocked for a tree preservation order “a copy whereof together with the map included therein is enclosed herewith.”
An award went to Hollywood star Alicia Silverstone who said, “I think that the film ‘Clueless’ was very deep, I think it was deep in the way that it was very light. I think lightness has to come from a very deep place if it’s true lightness.”
If you would like to have a generator of gobbledygook sentences, visit the Plain English generator site and look at their other pages while you are there; that is, if you are interested in knowing more about gobbledygook.
Ponder, to think about them over a period of time.
“The next best thing to being witty one’s self,
is to be able to quote another wit.”
—C.N. Bovée
“The Magna Carta: England’s first reign check.”
—Marlys Huffman
“The easy way to teach children the value of money
is to borrow it from them.”
—Author Unknown
“The Five Animal Stages of the Life of a Man are
spring chicken
little lamb
young lion
fat cat
old goat.”
—Author Unknown
On Grrr-ammar
“Yes, they’ve invited Jane and I
To come at four for tea.”
Whatever happened to that word
That once was known as “me”?
—Dick Layman
“Egotists are always me-deep in conversation”
—Author Unknown
“Don’t be jumping to confusions.”
—Author Unknown
“The mind—better read than dead!”
—Author Unknown
“The surprising thing about young fools is
how many survive to become old fools.”
—Doug Larson,
United Feature Sundicate
“The greatest mental risks we face today are
becoming disabled, dying too soon, living too long.”
—Author Unknown
“There is no pleasure in having nothing to do;
the fun is in having lots to do and not doing them.”
—Author Unknown
“Words—so innocent and powerless as they are
when standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil
they become in the hands of the one who knows how
to combine them.”
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
The demographics of the Focusing on Words Newsletter list includes many countries; however, those countries that have more than one percent of the total number of the newsletter subscribers include the following:
United States = 43%
India = 9%
Canada =3%
United Kingdom (England, et al.) = 3%
Australia =2%
These countries make a total of 60% of the total number of global subscribers while all of the other countries represent the remaining 40% of the total number of subscribers with less than 2% each.
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Latin-Greek-English
Cross-Reference Searches for FREE access to
extensive lists of English words that are derived from Latin and Greek sources.
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