Small talk on long words
MANY people still think that using sesquipedalian words (literally, words that are a foot-and-a-half long) will impress their listeners. The Roman poet Horace, in his book Arspoetica actually advises writers to avoid such practice. Still, it seems unfair to kill long words in the dictionary through nonuse.
When I was 14 years old, I managed to memorize what I thought was the longest word in the dictionary: Super cal if ra gil is tic ex pi ali doc io us. I tried to pronounce it perfectly because it made me feel like a boy genius, as Mary Poppins affirms: Oh, super cal if ra gil is tic ex pi ali doc io us! Even though the sound of it Is something quite atrocious,
If you say it loud enough You’ll always sound precocious. Actually, the message of the song is just the opposite: You use the word when you have nothing to say. The word is never used in the august halls of Congress or on TV news or talk shows, but it certainly describes the many conversations in those venues.
One time, I watched on television a hearing conducted by the honorable senators. When the interrogation began, one senator immediately launched his sesquipedalian monologue, forcing others to just tsk-tsk (a word containing only consonants expressing utter disapproval), or quietly say through their noses, Houyhnhnms (aword that imitates the neighing of horses), or distract themselves by humming euouae (a long word composed only of vowels used to indicate the tune of a medieval chant).
When the official who was summoned to the hearing finally got the chance to speak out, all that he got from the senators was an incredulous stare. They seemed to have developed fl o cc in au ci ni hi li pi lifi cation, a toxic attitude of simply dismissing what they heard as nothing. With feigned civility, the lead senator banged the gavel and adjourned the hearing honorific abilitu di nita ti bus (with an aura of honor), like one character in Shakespeare’s play “Love’s Labor Lost.”
Today, many legislators advocate charter change to achieve federalism, thereby dividing the nation into autonomous parts. But even without charter change, the rampant factionalism in our country has already divided us. So, why don’t they focus their attention on anti disestablishment arianism? For so many years now, the government has benefited from the fact that Catholic schools, together with private schools, practically take care of tertiary education in the country. But invoking the separation of Church and State, the government gives very little support to the Catholic Church in this regard, and sometimes even threatens to withdraw it altogether.
Such and other legal incomprehensibilities cause me headache, numbness, as well as hand and foot spasm, that I sometimes suspect that I am afflicted with pseudo pseudo hypo para thyroid ism.
If you think the last word in the above paragraph is the longest, you are mistaken. The longest word contains 189,819 letters. It is the name of a certain kind of protein in the human body. Pronouncing it will take at least three hours. Or, if you’re from Albay and sick wit hp n eu mono ultra microscopic si li co volcanok on io sis, a lung disease that makes it difficult to speak because of having inhaled too much volcanic ash, it may take one day.
By the way, the longest word in the Bible is in the Old Testament, Mahershalalhashbaz, the name of one of Isaiah’s son (Isaiah 8:3). The shortest verse is “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). And perhaps the shortest but most telling summary of the life of Jesus is: “He went about doing good” (Acts 10:38) which is eloquently elaborated by today’s Gospel reading (Mk. 1:29-39).