Sesquipedalian Words;
Part 2, 17-33

 Part 1, if you want to see it again.

Sesquipedalia Verba or Sesquipedalians in Action

“I asked you to tell me where you’ve been all afternoon! Don’t tell me again that you were over at Jimmy’s because I called and he said you weren’t there all day. Now, tell me the truth!”

“Mother, do you have the audacity to doubt my veracity and to insinuate that I prevaricate when I am as pure and undefiled as the icicles that hang from a church steeple?”

Johnny’s mother didn’t say any more at the time, because she decided to use her vocabulary resources to prepare a proper sesquipedalian response.

“John, my son, please transport from that exterior recumbent collection of fragmentary combustibles to the threshold of this edifice two curtailed expressions of defunct logs; and do it in this present tense of contiguous chronology.”

See if you can determine the meanings of these additional sesquipedialian presentations before you click on the solutions.

Verba Obscura #17

That unit of the avian tribe
Whose movements one can circumscribe
“In manu,” as a pair will rate
Subarboreally situate.



Translation for Verba Obscura #17 may be found by going to Translation #17.



Verba Obscura #18

For none who claims to represent
The “homo” species sapient
Will loiter Einstein’s fourth dimension
Or sea’s quotidian declension.

Translation for Verba Obscura #18 may be found by going to Translation #18.



Verba Obscura #19

Faced with material esculent
As source of liquid nourishment,
Avoid excess—’twill but displease—
Of culinary expertise.

Translation for Verba Obscura #19 may be found by going to Translation #19. Use your browser’s “back” or “return” button to return to this list.



Verba Obscura #20

It is fruitless to endure lacrimation over precipitately departed lacteal fluid.

Translation for Verba Obscura #20 may be found by going to Translation #20. Use your browser’s “back” or “return” button to return to this list.



Verba Obscura #21

A revolving lathic conglomerate accumulates no diminutive glaucous brophitic plants.

Translation for Verba Obscura #21 may be found by going to Translation #21. Use your browser’s “back” or “return” button to return to this list.



Verba Obscura #22

Missiles of ligneous or crystalline consistency have the potential for fracturing my osseous structure, but appellations will eternally be benign.

—Unknown Source

Translation for Verba Obscura #22 may be found by going to Translation #22. Use your browser’s “back” or “return” button to return to this list.



Verba Obscura #23

Eschew the implement of correction and vitiate the scion.

—Unknown Source

Translation for Verba Obscura #23 may be found by going to Translation #23. Use your browser’s “back” or “return” button to return to this list.



Verba Obscura #24

The stylus is more potent than the gladiate tool or xiphos.

—Unknown Source

Translation for Verba Obscura #24 may be found by going to Translation #24. Use your browser’s “back” or “return” button to return to this list.



Verba Obscura #25

Members of an avian species of identical plummage congregate.

—Unknown Source

Translation for Verba Obscura #25 may be found by going to Translation #25. Use your browser’s “back” or “return” button to return to this list.



Verba Obscura #26

Individuals who make their abode in vitreous edifices would be advised to refrain from catapulting petrous projectiles.

—Unknown Source

Translation for Verba Obscura #26 may be found by going to Translation #26. Use your browser’s “back” or “return” button to return to this list.



Verba Obscura #27

Exclusive dedication to necessary chores without interludes of hedonistic diversion renders John a hepetudinous fellow.

—Unknown Source

Translation for Verba Obscura #27 may be found by going to Translation #27. Use your browser’s “back” or “return” button to return to this list.



Verba Obscura #28

Male cadavers are incapable of yielding any testimony.

—Unknown Source

Translation for Verba Obscura #28 may be found by going to Translation #28. Use your browser’s “back” or “return” button to return to this list.



Verba Obscura #29

I entered the abode of the tonsorial artist to have my hirsute appendage diminished.

—Unknown Source

Translation for Verba Obscura #29 may be found by going to Translation #29. Use your browser’s “back” or “return” button to return to this list.



Verba Obscura #30

They were seated on adjoining stools in a dimly lighted cocktail lounge. “Honey,” he said, “what about forgetting your inhibitions and spending a quiet weekend with me at the beach?”

“See here,” she answered, “after an exhaustive perusal of the corpus of documented evidence garnered by research on heterosexuality as applied to contemporary sociological mores, and in view of the innate predisposition to the more exotic manifestations of concupiscence evident in your demeanor, a categorical negative is my response.”

“I don't get it,” he said.

“That’s right,” she exclaimed!

—Source Unknown




Verba Obscura #31

Here is part of a letter written by a government bureaucrat in response to a plumber's question about using hydrochloric acid to clean out some water pipes.

“The efficacy of hydrochloric acid is indisputable, but the corrosive residue is incompatible with metallic permanence.”

The plumber wrote back that he hoped that the government bureaucrat agreed that it was useful to use hydrochloric acid, but he said he didn’t understand the meaning of the letter. Would the official clarify what he meant.

The government official wrote back, “Don’t use hydrochloric acid to clean water pipes. It eats hell out of the pipes!”

—Unknown Source




Verba Obscura #32

Verbosity and circumlocution are too often substituted today for clear, direct expression. What Shakespearean play title, for instance, might now be worded like this?

“There is an ongoing viability to the aggregate of human enterprises that attain a terminal configuration without being adversely impacted.”

—As seen in a Book-of-the-Month-Club pamphlet several years ago [date unknown].

Translation for Verba Obscura #32 may be found by going to Translation #32. Use your browser’s “back” or “return” button to return to this list.




Verba Obscura #33

“Scintillate, scintillate, globule vivific!
Fain would I fathom thy nature specific,
Distantly poised in the ether capacious,
Closely resembling a gem carbonaceous. ”

Translation for Verba Obscura #33 may be found by going to Translation #33. Use your browser’s “back” or “return” button to return to this list.



  Part 1, if you want to see it again.

---





  You may return to the Modern Words List