Words by the Foot

The Roman poet Horace advised younger writers to avoid sesquipedalia verba, or “words a foot and a half long.” That turn of phrase gave us a modern supersize term to describe words with a ton of syllables: sesquipedalian (seh-skwuhpuh-'dayl-yun). Its Latin prefix sesqui- means “one and a half times,” and ped- means “foot.”