I love it when I see my English vocabulary expanding. This, of course, in sharp contrast to my abdominal circumference or the occasional pimple on the inside of my ear. Today, I bumped into a word I hadn't met before: somnambulism, which is basically a synonym for sleepwalking. Once again, it made me realize how lucky I am not to suffer from fear of long words.
Yes, fear of long words. Chances are you didn't know this, but this is an actual phobia. Some of the known symptoms of this form of fear are rapid breathing, sweating, overall feeling of dread, shortness of breath, irregular heartbeat and nausea. Ironically enough, the official medical term for this phobia is (and I swear, this is real, I am not kidding you) hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia (or 'sesquipedalophobia' for "short"). Say what?
Now, imagine your name is Christopher-William and that you were born in a lovely village in Wales called Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. By the time you shared your personal details with the specialist investigating your condition, you might be vomiting the shit out of yourself in a corner of his office. And I'm afraid you don't even want to hear what you're suffering from: by the time the conclusion of the investigation is communicated, you could actually be dying...
What intrigues me, is the following question: would there be a maximal amount of letters people suffering from sesquipedalophobia can handle without getting sick? This might seem like an irrelevant question to you, but think about this: one year you're having your birthday party (although it's not very likely that the actual Dutch word for it, verjaardagsfeestje, was mentioned on the invitation), safely enjoying your pancakes (pannekoeken, which was a valid way to spell this word before 1995). Next year however - after the Dutch spelling reform - pancakes make you sick because you have to add an extra letter! The other option is that sesquipedalophobia symptoms arise through a gradual process, starting with a mild headache for words containing between 5 and 8 letters, shortness of breath between 9 and 16 and an irregular heartbeat for words containing at least 17 letters. Which is pretty cruel, don't you think? The more points you score in Scrabble, the sicker you get...
Also: how do you organize your life? I mean, what kind of job can you do when you have a phobia for long word? Nowadays, with all the neologisms they are inventing to mask the true nature of a job (head of the logistics department in a waste service company may in reality stand for 'driving the waste truck'), reading job ads may already be quite a hazardous situation. Obviously, anything related to chemistry is excluded, especially when your childhood dream was to investigate titin (the largest known peptide): the chemical name for this protein is Methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginyl...isoleucine, a word (well, people are debating this - as it is a technical term, it is not in the dictionary) containing 189,819 letters! Yes, Wikipedia is your friend; unless of course 9 letters or more make you sick... The only option I see is to become a crossword puzzle maker, so that the maximal amount of letters you are confronted with on a daily basis is bounded. But that is pretty uninteresting, don't you think? Sorry, I mean 'dull'.
Next time you want to use a long word to impress people, I suggest you think twice and consider using an easier synonym. Because length sometimes matters...
[We would like to point out that this post is not meant to make fun of people suffering from fear of long words: we don't like floccinaucinihilipilification...]
Yes, fear of long words. Chances are you didn't know this, but this is an actual phobia. Some of the known symptoms of this form of fear are rapid breathing, sweating, overall feeling of dread, shortness of breath, irregular heartbeat and nausea. Ironically enough, the official medical term for this phobia is (and I swear, this is real, I am not kidding you) hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia (or 'sesquipedalophobia' for "short"). Say what?
Now, imagine your name is Christopher-William and that you were born in a lovely village in Wales called Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. By the time you shared your personal details with the specialist investigating your condition, you might be vomiting the shit out of yourself in a corner of his office. And I'm afraid you don't even want to hear what you're suffering from: by the time the conclusion of the investigation is communicated, you could actually be dying...
What intrigues me, is the following question: would there be a maximal amount of letters people suffering from sesquipedalophobia can handle without getting sick? This might seem like an irrelevant question to you, but think about this: one year you're having your birthday party (although it's not very likely that the actual Dutch word for it, verjaardagsfeestje, was mentioned on the invitation), safely enjoying your pancakes (pannekoeken, which was a valid way to spell this word before 1995). Next year however - after the Dutch spelling reform - pancakes make you sick because you have to add an extra letter! The other option is that sesquipedalophobia symptoms arise through a gradual process, starting with a mild headache for words containing between 5 and 8 letters, shortness of breath between 9 and 16 and an irregular heartbeat for words containing at least 17 letters. Which is pretty cruel, don't you think? The more points you score in Scrabble, the sicker you get...
Also: how do you organize your life? I mean, what kind of job can you do when you have a phobia for long word? Nowadays, with all the neologisms they are inventing to mask the true nature of a job (head of the logistics department in a waste service company may in reality stand for 'driving the waste truck'), reading job ads may already be quite a hazardous situation. Obviously, anything related to chemistry is excluded, especially when your childhood dream was to investigate titin (the largest known peptide): the chemical name for this protein is Methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginyl...isoleucine, a word (well, people are debating this - as it is a technical term, it is not in the dictionary) containing 189,819 letters! Yes, Wikipedia is your friend; unless of course 9 letters or more make you sick... The only option I see is to become a crossword puzzle maker, so that the maximal amount of letters you are confronted with on a daily basis is bounded. But that is pretty uninteresting, don't you think? Sorry, I mean 'dull'.
Next time you want to use a long word to impress people, I suggest you think twice and consider using an easier synonym. Because length sometimes matters...
[We would like to point out that this post is not meant to make fun of people suffering from fear of long words: we don't like floccinaucinihilipilification...]
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