First appearing in English in the mid-17th century, meaning “a foot and a half long”, it’s a noun identifying words with multiple syllables, or an often derogatory adjective for a person with a tendency to use overlong words.
Stretching back to Ancient Rome, the satirical poet Horace gently cautioned aspiring writers with a warning not to use sesquipedalia verba—"words a foot and a half long” – in his book Ars poetica, a collection of maxims about writing. Later in English literature the Romantic poet Robert Southey (1774–1843), went for double barrels, not only about another poet, the 16th century Stephen Hawes, but also a periodical, describing Hawes poems as “full of barbarous sesquipedalian Latinisms, as the prose of [the 18th-century periodical] the Rambler.”
But where does the word appearing in song lyrics? Despite it being itself, ironically, a bit of a mouthful, and not exactly rolling off the tongue, it does crop up. Here’s a small selection of examples, all of which have appeared in the last four years. London post-punk indie band Desperate Journalist fronted by singer Jo Bevan used it acerbically in their song Poison Pen from 2021’s Maximum Sorrow! album:
Oh you venerated writer
Could your knighthood be much whiter?
Caricature, yeah for sure
You write the eloquent charismatic poor …
Hero, nihilist, jailer
You are oh so tall and sesquipedalian
Tell me more about alienation
You laureate of your station
The eclectic Australian-Asian author and singer-musician Pat Boey actually uses the word as a song title, from the 2021 EP Vellichor, with lyrics such as:
She's a monument to the literary art
I apologise for my vocabulary
Someone call the constabulary
I just wanna capture your coyish grin
You're a sesquipedalian
I wanna meet with my private librarian
And finally, Oldham singer-songwriter Seb Lowe’s lively pop number I Fell In Love With a Talking Head, the title of his 2023 EP, is a catchy, witty number about falling for someone with that kind of wordiness:
But she was cool, because she didn’t care, and she said what she liked,
It was apparent that she didn’t like a thing, not even me.
She said, ‘I’m professionally sesquipedalian’.
Or whatever, whatever, whatever that means.
The word then, surprisingly, is still very much alive in lyrics. Any other lyrical sesquipedalians out there? Feel free to share anything more in relation to it, whether in music or wider culture, such as from film, art, or other contexts, in comments below.
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