Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness/Quotes

"Sir Humphrey: "I wonder if I might crave your momentary indulgence in order to discharge a by no means disagreeable obligation which has, over the years, become more or less established practice in government service as we approach the terminal period of the year -- calendar, of course, not financial -- in fact, not to put too fine a point on it, Week Fifty-One -- and submit to you, with all appropriate deference, for your consideration at a convenient juncture, a sincere and sanguine expectation -- indeed confidence -- indeed one might go so far as to say hope -- that the aforementioned period may be, at the end of the day, when all relevant factors have been taken into consideration, susceptible to being deemed to be such as to merit a final verdict of having been by no means unsatisfactory in its overall outcome and, in the final analysis, to give grounds for being judged, on mature reflection, to have been conducive to generating a degree of gratification which will be seen in retrospect to have been significantly higher than the general average." (Beat) Jim Hacker: "Are you trying to say "Happy Christmas," Humphrey?" Sir Humphrey: "Yes, Minister.""

- Yes Minister, "Party Games" (the Christmas Special)

"Sir Humphrey: "Prime Minister, I must protest in the strongest possible terms my profound opposition to a newly instituted practice which imposes severe and intolerable restrictions upon the ingress and egress of senior members of the hierarchy and which will, in all probability, should the current deplorable innovation be perpetuated, precipitate a constriction of the channels of communication, and culminate in a condition of organisational atrophy and administrative paralysis which will render effectively impossible the coherent and co-ordinated discharge of the functions of government within Her Majesty's United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland!" Jim Hacker: "You mean you've lost your key?""

- Yes Prime Minister

"Which is to say, how it goes Couched in terms no one knows And as if the choice were slim As if there's no synonym"

- They Might Be Giants, "Contrecoup"

"Reed: I couldn't have said it better myself Johnny. Johnny: Yes you could, you just woulda used bigger words."

- Fantastic Four

"Brink: Come here, you phlegm-carapaced, slime-faced, mucus-brained, furry legged abductor of luminously intelligent but pulchritudinous Earth women! [Beat] Brink: Low, you idiot! Why are you standing there? Low: I'm still trying to figure out what you said."

- The Dig

""Solicitations malefactors! I am endeavouring to misappropriate the formulary for the preparation of affordable comestibles! WHO WILL JOIN ME!?" (gets promptly beaten up by barroom thugs he was attempting to enlist)"

- Plankton, SpongeBob SquarePants

""I'm sorry, Yuan-Ti have a high intelligence compared to most humanoids and in my case, it causes me to fall victim to an exponentially redundant vocabulary when I become nervous.""

- Kin, Goblins - Life Through Their Eyes

""Would you shut up? No one talks like that! You don't sound smart, you sound like an idiot!""

- Takn, to Kin a few strips later

"Massey: Sergeant Schlock... What an exciting opportunity you have provided. Never before... Not during law school, not during my six years in private practice, not even working as a Public Defender... Never have I been privileged to give a subordinate a "dressing down." Such a momentous occasion deserves a diatribe inspired by tragic Melpomene, or perhaps comedic Thalia, framed within the gifts of Polyhymnia's oratory and rhetoric. In that same Hellenic vein, I have mused upon the upbraiding to be administered, pondered the possible punishments... And found, to my lament this condign castigation must be meet for your particularly picayune patois. (Beat) Massey: You idiot. We are going to get sued for your little shoot-'em-up, and it is going to BREAK us. Now go to bed and dream of poverty. I've got work to do.

(Later)

Ebbirnoth: Well? How'd it go?

Schlock: Massey beat me up with big words."

- Schlock Mercenary

"If you want to advance in management you have to convince other people that you're smart. This is accomplished by substituting incomprehensible jargon for common words. For example, a manager would never say, "I used my fork to eat a potato." A manager would say, "I utilized a multitined tool to process a starch resource." The two sentences mean almost the same thing, but the second one is obviously from a smarter person."

- Scott Adams, The Dilbert Principle

""An exigiously more sedulous management of even etoliated phrenic sinews would evulgate your heterization as latent.""

- Reggie tells some new friends that they aren't as mutated as him, Major Bummer

""Here's your Saying A Word No One Else In The Room Knows Patch.""

- Milly to fellow Fireside Girl Gretchen, Phineas and Ferb

""Say, any of you boys smithies? Or, if not smithies per se, were you otherwise trained in the metallurgic arts before straitened circumstances forced you into a life of aimless wanderin'?""

- Ulysses Everett McGill, O Brother, Where Art Thou?

"Leonardo: Sounds like you've got everything covered, Donny. Michelangelo: Yeah, especially the big words!"

- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Back to the Sewer

"Barney: I'm telling you: Within three days... Lily: Oh, here he comes-- switch to big words. Barney: Within a triad of solar periods, you'll recognize your dearth of compatibility with your paramour and conclude your association. Robin: My journey was transformative, and I reassert my commitment to both the aforementioned paramour, and the philosophies he espouses. Gael: What are we talking of? Baseball?

Barney: This is all going to return to masticate you in the gluteals. Support my hypothesis, Ted.

Ted: I'm just jubilant my former paramour is jubilant."

- How I Met Your Mother

"I've had enough of your snide insinutations. (punch) --Shepard, punching out a reporter, Mass Effect I've had enough of your disinegenious assertions! (punch)"

- Shepard, punching out the same reporter, Mass Effect 2

""And so I, Mojo Jojo, impart upon you the empowerment of Mo’ Linguish! And with this power, you will no longer speak in brief, boring, abbreviated sentences, but instead will wow the crowds with your scintillating usage of an overabundance of nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, prepositions, and of course the Conjunction Junctions which have a multiple of functions.""

- Mojo Jojo, The Powerpuff Girls (episode "Mo’ Linguish")

"Okey dokey, Mr. Vocabulary, what does "pistol-whip" mean?"

- Crow T. Robot, Mystery Science Theater 3000 (episode Teenage Crime Wave)

"Lorenz: My monumental thoughts' manifestations - which are realized in the form of sentences - are not always acceptable for your limited mental capabilities. The continuity of our dialogue is therefore interrupted. Synthesis of arguments does not occur. Neon: ...say what? What am I doing here?

Lorenz: Good question. But far from being the most relevant one. A more interesting one would be what am I doing here sitting on chairmats, without a bed, table or food. Or - as you would notice - without a detailed TV program guide either."

- Vektor, The Abridged Series of The Matrix

""My introduction will be sparse. There will be no majestic prose blustering into the sails of a galleon as we embark upon this voyage together.""

- Rose Lalonde, Homestuck

"Elizabeth: Captain Barbossa, I am here to negotiate the cessation of hostilities against Port Royal. Barbossa: There were a lot of long words in there, Miss. We're not but humble pirates! What is it that you want? Elizabeth: I want you to leave and never come back. Barbossa: I'm disinclined to acquiesce to your request. Elizabeth: ... Barbossa: Means "no"."

- Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

""Scintillate, scintillate diminutive stellar orb. How inexplicable to me seems this stupendous problem of your existence. Elevated at such at an immeasurable distance, in an apparently perpendicular direction from this terrestrial planet which we occupy. Resembling in thy dazzling and unapproachable effulgence, a gem of purest carbon, set solitaire in a university of space.""

- King Friday XIII

"Wolverine: "Hey bub, I'm a Marvel."

Doctor Manhattan: "At this point, I am obligated to inform you that I am a DC in order to differentiate between our companies. However, both companies exist in the same plane of reality, both contains the same number of particles. Structurally, there is no discernible differences."

Wolverine: Wow, who wouldn't pay to see that for 3 hours?"
 * Beat*

- I'm a Marvel And I'm a DC: Wolverine and Watchmen (Dr. Manhattan)

"Michael Aspel: It has the whiff of verisimilitude. Angus Deayton: I think he's saying it's true."

- Would I Lie to You?

"Lovecraft is wonderfully distinct, and I love him to bits, but the more of his work you read, the more you determine that his main strength is in writing in the uniquely self-indulgent Lovecraft style. (What, another gambrel rooftop? The moon is, wait, let me guess - gibbous? The ruins -- Cyclopean? Their geometry -- hideous and inhuman? And then he goes and coins the word "hippocephalic" for no good reason.)"

- Pseudo_Intellectual

""The trouble with you, Hank, is that you can't understand anybody who doesn't use ten-syllable words!""

- Bobby Drake, X-Men #7

""Write it in English, not in Pentagonese. It's not a launcher, rifle cartridge, 7.62mm; it's a rifle. Call it a compass, not a direction-finding module. And if someone insists on being called AdcomphibsPac, the Fact File should explain to those not gifting in garblespeak that he's talking about the administrative office of the communication services for amphibious forces in the Pacific.""

- Preface to The United States Department of Defense Fact File

":  '"Hellfire!" erupted Thomas Covenant, his raw, self-inflicted nostrils clenching in white-hot, stoical anguish while his gaunt, compulsory visage knotted with fey misery. His lungs were clogged with ruin. A hot, gelid, gagging, fulvous tide of self-accusation dinned in his ears: leper bestseller outcast unclean.... To release the analystic refulgence, the wild magic of the white gold ring he wore, could conceivably shatter the Arch of Time, utterly destroy the Land, and put a premature, preterite end to the plot!


 * 'Yet what other way was there? The argute notion pierced his mind like a jerid. Only thus could the unambergrised malison of Lord Foul be aneled. Only thus. He clenched his clenching. Hellfire and damnation!


 * 'At that point he winced at a swift, sapid lucubration ...'

If you recognized this as mickey-taking directed at the great Stephen Donaldson, score 20 points."

- [//ansible.uk/sfx/sfx040.html Set Phasers to 'Spoof'] by David Langford, in SFX magazine