Thursday, April 16, 2009

Words My Sister's Looking Up (Similar to one in an occasional series on words I'm looking up, just with less work for me)

hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia

n. Fear of long words -- Dictionary.com

Somewhat reluctantly, I 'spose I should add that neither Webster's New World College Dictionary, Merriam-Webster online, or American Heritage online recognize this word. Still. Fun stuff. Shout out to my sister Diane for calling this to my attention.

And there was something else she called to my attention. Our mother's maiden name was Little. So in a culture where children take the mother's name followed by the father's name, our name would be, in essence, Little Big House.


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8 comments:

LL Blackwell said...

Dude, if can remember that, it might replace my current favorite word (also not sure if the whole thing is in the dictionary, but I saw it in print, so it must be, right?):

antisesquipedalianism, n. the use of short words (and totally awesome because it is inherently oxymoronic!)

June Casagrande said...

That's a big if. I've already forgotten it.

Really, what the heck is that doing in a dictionary? Did some lexicographer say, "I can no longer sit idly by listening to people use this word and not make it official"?

Freaky.

Adrian Morgan said...

Similar to which one in an occasional series, exactly? (And what's it like to know that you have observant readers?)

In my ancestry (back a few generations) was a woman who changed her surname from Wittenbury to Berry, and apparently was known to jest that her husband took away her wit.

I linked to something on my blog today that's bound to strike terror into the hearts of copy editors everywhere - a story that I wrote when I was twelve years old. It's awful.

June Casagrande said...

"Similar to which one in an occasional series, exactly? (And what's it like to know that you have observant readers?)"

Snap! (That's "My Name Is Earl"-speak for "touchez." Actually, no it's not. But close enough for our purposes.)

I grew up with some Berrys in Florida. They were the cool girls in school. Not much wit, though, unless you count, "Oh, my God! So-and-so's jeans are SO tacky."

I'm off to take kitties to the vet. I'll try to make time to read the link later ...

Adrian Morgan said...

Have you ever looked at my blog other than after I mention something from it in a comment? One way to make me happy would be to turn up unexpectedly sometimes and leave the odd comment of your own...

Yours is pretty much the only blog I comment on as "8'FED". Elsewhere I either use my OpenID profile ("outerhoard") or type my name, and in either case the comment links back to my blog automatically. Here, because you only allow comments from Google/Blogger accounts (and not OpenID, for example), I have to put the link in manually or there's no link.

Great Grandpa Berry died aged 97 when I was a child, and I never knew his wife at all.

goofy said...

http://blog.oup.com/2007/08/long_words/

June Casagrande said...

Aha!

(I should have known that lots more interesting stuff had already been printed on the subject.)

Thanks for the link, Goofy!

June Casagrande said...

8'FED:

I never saw your last comment until just now! I'm not sure how that happened. Sorry 'bout that.

I'm hesitant to admit it, but I almost never read blogs unless I'm led directly to them. I'm not sure why that is. I've enjoyed yours when I've read it, just as I've enjoyed many others. But, when online, I'm often in this weird brain-dead state where all I can do is troll for cheap fares to Hawaii and, on good days, skim some news sites.

Except for a few rare days in years past, I can't even really get into YouTube. Mental flat-lining.

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