Friday, October 29, 2010

Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia

An update on Monday's post...and some additional long words.

By the way, hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia is a fictional phobia that is defined as the fear of long words.

According to a Wikipedia article hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia is derived from: hippopoto- "big" due to its allusion to the Greek-derived word hippopotamus (though this is derived as hippo- "horse" compounded with potam-os "river", so originally meaning "river horse"; according to the Oxford English, "hippopotamine" has been construed as large since 1847, so this coinage is reasonable); -monstr- is from Latin words meaning "monstrous", -o- is a noun-compounding vowel; -sesquipedali- comes from "sesquipedalian" meaning a long word (literally "a foot and a half long" in Latin), -o- is a noun-compounding vowel, and -phobia means "fear".

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