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Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness (view source)

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{{trope}}
[[File:teodmpoteaopofmp_2091teodmpoteaopofmp 2091.jpg|frame|[http://www.somethingawful.com/d/fashion-swat/science-fair-swat.php?page=9 In other words], the effects of [[wikipedia:Drosophila melanogaster|fruit flies]] on the [[wikipedia:Polyphenol oxidase|browning]] of [http://www.tradewindsfruit.com/apple.htm apples].]]
 
 
''Sesquipedalian'': A long word, or characterized by the use of long words. From the Latin roots meaning "a foot and a half long."
 
''Loquaciousness'': [[Con Air|That would be garrulousness, verboseness, effusiveness. How about "chattiness"? ]]
 
A predilection by the intelligentsia to engage in the manifestation of prolix exposition through a buzzword disposition form of communication notwithstanding the availability of more comprehensible, punctiliously applicable, diminutive alternatives. Also known as "gross verbosity".
 
In brief: [[TV Genius|"smart" characters]] using long words when short ones would be better. Characters afflicted with this trait often seem to go out of their way to over-complicate their speech, probably because writers think that this is the only way to show that someone is more intelligent than the average writer. This could also be the trait of a particularly anal-retentive character who always has to be right, the trait extending so far that the character always has to use ''exactly'' the [[Grammar Nazi|right]] word -- neverword—never using "blue" when "azure" would be more accurate, for example.
 
Occasionally such characters may drop the long words if things get particularly dire, to emphasize just how bad things are (in the same way as a [[Sarcasm Failure]]). Alternatively, they may get even ''more'' wordy as they get more emotional, leading to increasingly detailed but ultimately incoherent ranting that falls too easily into [[Wangst]]. Frequently another character will respond with something like "Wouldn't it be easier to just [whatever the brainy person said, in layman's terms]?" or "And [layman's terms version], too!"
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** Lordgenome's Head is pretty bad at this too.
* ''[[Genshiken]]'' uses this for its [[Idiosyncratic Episode Naming]].
** This is done as if the episodes were a college thesis paper; it's done for the whole first season -- hintedseason—hinted to by done by the President (who might or might not have cameras hidden everywhere) -- while more normal episode naming is done during season two.
* Yue of ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' tends to do this on occasion.
* Ulquiorra in the [[Viz Media]] translation of ''[[Bleach]]'' flaunts his vocabulary in almost every conversation.
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'''The Thing:''' Hey Torch--why don'tcha just shut up and look awestruck like the rest of us? }}
** Adding to the trope, The Thing is the inverse, not because he's dumb but because he's plain spoken. He can generally understand what Reed is saying even when others don't and sometimes acts as the [[Translator Buddy]]. But some writers forget he's a former astronaut and write him as the big dumb guy because of the way he talks which itself is a meta example with writers inferring the character trait because of this trope.
* Doctor Henry McCoy (a.k.a. Beast of the ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]'') does this all the time. In most incarnations, it's for the joy of wordplay -- everyonewordplay—everyone he works with already knows he's a genius -- thoughgenius—though it undoubtedly has a side effect of convincing people he's never met before that [[Genius Bruiser|even mutants who look like him can possess an enormous vocabulary]].
** And he does it with insults too; "go suck eggs" becomes:
{{quote|'''Hank:''' Why don't you go orally extract embryonic fluid from a hen's egg?}}
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** ''What if someone calls us a pair of pathetic peripatetics?''
* The Caged Demonwolf from ''[[Empowered]]'', with lots of [[Alliteration]]. (''"Like unto 80s action-cinema icon Michael Dudikoff, be you a fabled [[Ninja]] American, oh jingoistic jackanapes?"'')
** His [[Imagine Spot|Imagine Spots]]s are readily identified because it carries over to ''everyone's'' dialogue (even mid-ravishing).
* Mammoth Mogul of the ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog (comics)|Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' comic is known for this, to the point that when told Mogul wants to talk with him, Sonic prays that he has a sore throat as he's got other things to do that day.
* One of the Kingpin's lieutenants speaks like this in ''[[Daredevil]]'': Born Again. Like the [[Sin City]] example above, this was ''[[Self-Plagiarism|also written by]]'' [[Frank Miller]]. It predates it by a number of years, but still.
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{{quote|'''Lamarr:''' My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.
'''Taggart:''' Goldarn it, Mr. Lamarr, you use your tongue prettier than a $20 whore. }}
* One of the trademarks of [[Marx Brothers|Groucho Marx]] was fast [[Deadpan Snarker|deadpan]] [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness]].
* Johann Krauss from ''[[Hellboy II]]: The Golden Army''.
{{quote|'''Krauss:''' Shoot it in ze central ganglion!
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{{quote|"The leathery, undeteriorative, and almost indestructible quality was an inherent attribute of the thing's form of organization, and pertained to some paleogean cycle of invertebrate evolution utterly beyond our powers of speculation."}}
** Legend, at least, has it that he once got stuck with nothing to read but a(n abridged) copy of the [[Oxford English Dictionary]]...
** At least this one had the excuse that it was supposed to be the recollection of a scientist printed in an attempt to prevent further exploration of Antarctica -- manyAntarctica—many scientists in real life tend to go for complicated expression even when they wouldn't need to, in subconscious belief that it'll give a more intelligent impression. Universities often try to discourage this, but with limited success.
** Would you believe he occasionally used this for [[Deadpan Snarker|deadpan snarking]]? From ''[[The Dunwich Horror]]'': "But then, the homes and sheds of Dunwich's folk have never been remarkable for olfactory immaculateness."
* Continuing in the Lovecraft theme in ''[[The Laundry Series|The Laundry]]'', Charles Stross would often pay tribute to Lovecraft by jokingly describing eldritch-related things as "squamous and rugose". Of course, as his works take the [[Viewers Are Geniuses]] route, his own characters occasionally dip into this trope as well.
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'''Basil''': Are you all right? }}
** In "Communication Problems", Polly gets rid of the pushy, selectively deaf Mrs. Richards by asking Manuel to "lend her your assistance in connection with her reservation", knowing that Manuel won't understand.
* The Sixth Doctor in ''[[Doctor Who]]'' took this to ridiculous lengths -- andlengths—and in Pip & Jane Baker scripts, most ''other'' characters would start talking like this as well.
{{quote|'''The Doctor:''' Fortuitous would be a more apposite epithet!
'''Peri:''' Or, as we humans say, "Lucky would be a better word." }}
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*** [[Tropes Are Not Bad|Raised to an art form]] with the audio drama ''...ish''.
** Couple the Sixth Doctor's vocabulary with Gilbert and Sullivan's music and the results are downright hilarious, as evidenced in Part 3 of the Big Finish audio drama ''Doctor Who and the Pirates''. Can anyone say [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIdDXQ2h1Pc "I am the Very Model of a Gallifreyan Buccaneer"]?
* This was part of the appeal (and [[Narm|Narmfuel]]fuel) of ''[[Dawson's Creek|Dawsons Creek]]''.
** One ad for the show pretty much came right out and said this: "They're teenagers but they don't ''talk'' like teenagers. Watch ''Dawson's Creek'' at [time] on [day]."
* River Tam from ''[[Firefly]]'' occasionally slipped into this, with a mix of [[Infallible Babble]] and a banquet's worth of [[Word Salad]].
** Zoe could be said to have done this once when she said she felt "sanguine" about an upcoming meeting. She justifies it by explaining that "sanguine" means hopeful AND bloody, which, as Mal notes, "pretty much covers all the options"
* Sir Humphrey Appleby in ''[[Yes Minister]]'' / ''Yes Prime Minister'' speaks in an overly long and complex fashion in order to flummox his political masters and thus maintain the Civil Service status quo -- howeverquo—however, he's so used to speaking in such a fashion that he's incapable of speaking clearly even when he genuinely wants to make himself clearly understood.
** Not so much ''incapable'' as very, very reluctant. A short answer could generally be dragged out of him and usually formed the punchline to a joke. For instance, here's how Humphrey confesses his sins:
{{quote|'''Sir Humphrey Appleby:''' The identity of the official whose alleged responsibility for this hypothetical oversight has been the subject of recent discussion is not shrouded in quite such impenetrable obscurity as certain previous disclosures may have led you to assume, but, not to put too fine a point on it, the individual in question is, it may surprise you to learn, one whom your present interlocutor is in the habit of defining by means of the perpendicular pronoun.
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'''Robin:''' My journey was transformative and I reassert my commitment to both the aforementioned paramour and the philosophies he espouses. }}
** In reality, this isn't a very good plan, since longer words are more often cognates for close languages like English and Spanish.
** Ted talks like this all the time, especially during the college flashbacks, because he is -- inis—in the other characters' own words -- douchywords—douchy like that. And his on-again/off-again high school/college girlfriend, Karen, talks like this all the time too.
** Also in ''Old King Clancy'' while talking about GNB's firing room, the ETR, or Employee Transition Room:
{{quote|'''Barney:''' It's a space where a supervisor and an employee engage in a knowledge transfer about an ''impending vocational paradigm shift.''}}
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** [[Eminem]] to some degree has this as well, as his style is actually very eloquent and verbose at times, despite whatever the topic may be.
** If we're on the subject of rappers, Busdriver, just listen to any song of his from "Roadkillovercoat" onward
* Tom Lehrer's song "Lobachevsky" refers to the title character's first original paper, which had the [[Sarcasm Mode|easy-to-remember]] title of ''Analytical Algebraic Topology of a Locally Euclidean Metricization of an Infinitely Differentiable Riemannian Manifold.'' Most listeners would assume Lehrer was playing this trope straight -- butstraight—but [[Genius Bonus|anyone familiar with the historical Lobachevsky and his work in geometry]] would realize that this was actually a perfectly reasonable title for a paper in his field of math.
** Heck, half of Tom Lehrer's works are quiiite vorbose. And the other half... Needs brain bleach.
* [[Tim Minchin]]. It doesn't matter if he's currently singing about "[[Cluster F-Bomb|the motherfucking]] [[Acceptable Targets|pope]]", he'll still squeeze in some very eloquent words.
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== Computational, mobile, and other post-television media (New Media) ==
* A common game in the [[Image Boards]] is the "Verbose Thread": everybody must speak with the most convoluted sesquipedalianisms possible, and that includes the [[Image Macro|Image Macros]]s. "I think halo is a pretty cool guy, he kills aliens and doesn't afraid of anything", for example, becomes "I hold a personal ideology whose central belief is that Master Chief from the ''Halo'' videogames is a quite remarkable and interesting man, because he terminates extraterrestrials and does not cower in the face of insurmountable odds." This has led, for example, to "NO U" becoming "I would like to elucidate the fact that the aforementioned statements about me apply more accurately to their own author."
** Fascinating anecdote, fraternal sibling.
*** I optically perceive the actions you have performed upon the above discussion.
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{{quote|'''Edwin:''' Marvelous work! You've obviously exceeded your lowborn heritage and surged to the vanguard of goonery!
'''Protagonist:''' ... Uh, what? }}
* Taken to ridiculous extremes in the fan-made ''[[Phylomortis]]'' [[Game Maker|RPG Maker]] games where ''every single character'' spoke in nothing but big words... including children no older than six years old. Even the [[He Knows About Timed Hits|in-game tutorials]] abused this. That, coupled with their [[Nintendo Hard|Nintendo Hardness]]ness made the series inaccessible to all but the most dedicated gamers. The sole gimmick of the game was its ridiculous standard of vocabulary, however, so it's safe to say that its target audience (however small) was indeed captured.
** Not just the characters. Most of the menu commands and system dialogue, too. Most games would be content with ending a battle with "Victory!" or "You won the battle!" ''Phylomortis'' capped it off with "You mercilessly slew the obnoxious foe..."
* Sam of ''[[Sam and Max Freelance Police|Sam & Max]]'', a six-foot canine shamus, tends to express himself in this general manner. Said manner tends to annoy his partner. Perhaps his most elegant wordsmithing takes place in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp94UERknaw promo]. Sam occasionally demonstrates that he is [[Sophisticated As Hell]].
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* ''[[Penny Arcade]]'''s Tycho, both the author and the in-comic persona, likes to do this, as does his niece Ann (AKA Annarchy).
** When Penny Arcade did the mini-series Automata, Carl Swangee at one point refers to talking about the weather as "the ambient barometric pressure".
* In ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]]'', the hyper-intelligent fuzzy monster Molly peppers her speech with big, obscure, or antiquarian words -- butwords—but she is equally likely to use teenage slang or kindergarten kiddie-speak. Galatea makes observation of her sister's odd speech patterns [http://bobadventures.comicgenesis.com/d/20080920.html here.]
* Rocky, of ''[[Lackadaisy Cats]]'', the majority of the time.
{{quote|'''Rocky:''' ''(trying to avoid being shot)'' Avril, Avril! From one reasoned individual to another... uh, if speech is truly what [[Irony|separates us from the beasts]]... as the Greeks suggested... I remain optimistic we're not yet beyond a resolution... uh, through civil discourse?<br />
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** [[wikipedia:Nocturnal penile tumescence|This]] [[Wikipedia]] article is about men having erections in their sleep. Sort of justified in that the author would take great pains not to sound vulgar.
** Here's what Wikipedia has to say about [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tetrodotoxin&oldid=441947764#Symptoms_and_treatment the effects of tetrodotoxin], the poison found in pufferfish:
{{quote|"Paresthesias<ref>"pins and needles" type sensation; this is about the most justifiable of the lot, given the awkwardness of using the more common description</ref> of the lips and tongue are followed by sialorrhea,<ref>drooling</ref>, sweating, headache, weakness, lethargy, ataxia,<ref>incoordination</ref>, incoordination,<ref>Yes, they used this one twice. See what happens when you use words nobody without a medical degree understands?</ref>, tremor, paralysis, cyanosis,<ref>bluish skin</ref>, aphonia,<ref>inability to speak</ref>, dysphagia,<ref>difficulty swallowing</ref>, seizures, dyspnea,<ref>shortness of breath</ref>, bronchorrhea,<ref>excessive phlegm</ref>, bronchospasm,<ref> sudden constriction of the airways</ref>, respiratory failure, coma, and hypotension.<ref>low blood pressure</ref>."}}
:::This is pretty typical for articles dealing with the symptoms of various toxins. At least they're (usually) courteous enough to [[Pothole]] the more arcane words so you can just click them and say to yourself "oh, is that all that means?"
** [[wikipedia:Maternal insult|Has anyone googled the Wikipedia explanation for "Yo Mom" jokes before?]]
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'''Farnsworth:''' Correct! This box contains our own universe! }}
* Mr. Longface Caterpillar from the 2009 ''[[Strawberry Shortcake]]'' movie peppers his speech with overly fancy words, which are [[Layman's Terms|translated]] by Blueberry Muffin. This is [[Inverted Trope|inverted]] at one point when he mentions fool's gold, and Blueberry "translates" this to its official name, iron pyrite.
* In the ''[[Pinky and The Brain]]'' episode "TV or not TV" Brain has a brief career as a stand-up comedian involving him insulting the audience by phrasing his insults using [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness]].
** The Brain does this constantly, even going so far as to rephrase common expressions with more advanced vocabulary ("The game does not conclude until the woman with the eating disorder ululates.")
* Egon Spengler's penchant for this in ''[[The Real Ghostbusters]]'' and ''[[Extreme Ghostbusters]]'' is turned [[Up to Eleven]] from his movie counterpart.
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** Sufficiently large technical communities can develop their own specialized vocabulary on top of normal technical terms, such that an entire sentence can be incomprehensible to expert outside programmers, and doubly incomprehensible to non-programmers.
*** Triply so due to the fact that some jargon have been re-used to mean different things elsewhere, in both the specialist and layman sense.
* Everything [[Rule of Funny|becomes funny]] if you describe it with [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness]], as Dr. Henry Gibbons has shown us: "A kiss is the anatomical juxtaposition of two orbicular muscles in a state of contraction."
** Also known as "osculation".
** Scientific American got in on the game as well: "the localized knowledge and know-how developed with untutored experience in particular everyday settings and activities--the so-called school of hard knocks"
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* Ron Dennis, the former boss of the Mclaren [[Formula One]] team, made such exemplary use of this trope that it became known around the paddock as "Ronspeak". Asked why he spoke like that, he replied, "Adherence to a homogenous lexicon axiomatically optimises messaging consistency. So it works".
* When comedian Dennis Miller starts to rant during his shows, he's pretty quick to break out his more verbose vocabulary in rapid succession, and is difficult to follow should one not be birthed from a tome of words.
* The nonfictional portion of ''The Science of [[Discworld]]'' points out that without the use of "privitives" in language -- termslanguage—terms for the absence of things, such as "dark" (no light), "cold" (lack of heat), or "sober" (a state of non-intoxication) -- everyone would ''have'' to talk like this.
* Jeremy Bentham, the founder of Utilitarianism, never used one short word when he could use a dozen long ones. Here's his attempt to sum up the philosophy in one sentence:
{{quote|"A man may be said to be partisan to the principle of utility, when the approbation or disapprobation he annexes to any action, or to any measure, is determined by and proportioned to the tendency which he conceives it to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the community."}}
** In other words, a Utilitarian should try to produce as much happiness in the world as he can.
* [[Russell Brand]] has made a veritable art-form out of blending [[Sophisticated As Hell|prolixity and profanity]]. Garrulously, he will pontificate, sermonize, and evangelize, interminably vociferating fustian rhetoric - and all for the sake of a [[Nob Gag]].
* In his interviews and [[F for Fake|documentaries]] [[Orson Welles]] somehow manages to be a [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness|Sesquipedalian Loquacian]] [[Deadpan Snarker]].
* [[Richard Feynman]], in his memoirs, recalled attending a lecture in [[Hard on Soft Science|some social science or other]] wherein he encountered the following sentence: "The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic channels." {{spoiler|"Feynman "translated" this sentence as follows: "People read."}}
* The preface to ''The United States Department of Defense Fact File'' admonishes readers against this trope. See the [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness/Quotes|Quotes tab]].
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