Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Difference between revisions

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It's worth noting that there is a word for the ''fear'' of long words; ironically, it's "sesquipedalophobia" often exaggerated by people into "hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia".

The polar opposite of [[Buffy Speak]]. [[Big Words]] redirects here, for those of us who prefer to avert this trope in [[Real Life]]. Contrast the [[Laconic ~~Wiki~~]]. Also note that the similarity to [[Techno Babble]]. May require one to have a [[Translator Buddy]].

The polar opposite of [[Buffy-Speak]]. [[Big Words]] redirects here, for those of us who prefer to avert this trope in [[Real Life]]. Contrast the [[Laconic]]. Also note that the similarity to [[Techno Babble]]. May require one to have a [[Translator Buddy]].

== Animated & drawn media originating in, or imitating the style of, the Eastern nation of ''Nippon-Koku'', known in English as Japan (Anime And Manga) ==

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{{quote| '''Leeron:''' Genetic diversity via sexual reproduction is the key to evolution.

''(confused [[Reaction Shot]] from the Dai-Gurren Brigade)''

'''Leeron:''' ''(makes a heart shape with his fingers)'' [[~~Laymans~~ Terms|Love makes the world go 'round!]] [[Say It With Hearts|<3]]

'''Leeron:''' ''(makes a heart shape with his fingers)'' [[Layman's Terms|Love makes the world go 'round!]] [[Say It With Hearts|<3]]

"Oh!" "Of course!" }}

** Lordgenome's Head is pretty bad at this too.

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'''Doctor''': Indigestion? Only in Mexico. }}

* Recommended to Jake in the beginning of ''[[Avatar]]''. Met with limited success.

** This trope possibly led to the downfall of [[The Smart Guy|Dr. Grace]] when attempting to explain to [[Money Dear Boy|Selfridge]]. If she had said that that Tree of Voices was basically a sentient graveyard containing the entire ancestry of the Na'vi, and that there were billions of dollars in patents to be had in a single plant, '''''maybe''''' Selfridge '''''might''''' have listened. Instead she spoke in techno-babble about neurons, exponents, and spirits. None of which Selfridge considered "real."

** This trope possibly led to the downfall of [[The Smart Guy|Dr. Grace]] when attempting to explain to [[Money, Dear Boy|Selfridge]]. If she had said that that Tree of Voices was basically a sentient graveyard containing the entire ancestry of the Na'vi, and that there were billions of dollars in patents to be had in a single plant, '''''maybe''''' Selfridge '''''might''''' have listened. Instead she spoke in techno-babble about neurons, exponents, and spirits. None of which Selfridge considered "real."

* Egon Spengler from ''[[Ghostbusters]]''.

{{quote| '''Pete Venkman:''' Hi, Egon. How's school? I bet those science chicks really dig that large cranium of yours, huh?

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* Doctor Emmet Brown from ''[[Back to The Future]]'' does this occasionally, though not as often (or as badly) as his counterpart from the animated series (see below).

{{quote| ''Look! There's a rhythmic ceremonial ritual coming up!''}}

* The sleazy, pseudo-intellectual wannabe [[Southern Fried Genius]] crook played by [[Tom Hanks]] in the [[Coen Brothers]] version of ''[[The Lady Killers]]''.

* The sleazy, pseudo-intellectual wannabe [[Southern-Fried Genius]] crook played by [[Tom Hanks]] in the [[Coen Brothers]] version of ''[[The Lady Killers]]''.

* The [[Coneheads]]' speech is a heavy mixture of this and [[Call a Rabbit A Smeerp]].

* ''[[No Strings Attached]]'': Used quite a bit in the jokes of the doctors.

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* 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 -- 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.

* [[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.

* Joanna Newsom often plays this straight, because a lot of her songs are fairy tales. They also tend to be long. And gorgeous. Example:

{{quote| "Now her coat drags through the water / Bagging, with a life's-worth of hunger, limitless minnows / In the magnetic embrace / Balletic and glacial of Bear's insatiable shadow"}}

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** And the Archbishop in ''Henry V'', whose loquaciousness over Henry's right to the French crown is usually played for laughs, but also hides the reality that Henry's claim to the ''English'' crown was almost as weak (his father having been an usurper)

* ''[[The Mikado]]'': Pooh-Bah "can trace [his] ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule."

** The [[Modern Major General]] in ''[[The Pirates of Penzance]]'' does a bit of this too, though more on the loquacious side.

** The [[Modern Major-General]] in ''[[The Pirates of Penzance]]'' does a bit of this too, though more on the loquacious side.

* Ralph Rackstraw in ''[[HMS Pinafore (Theatre)|HMS Pinafore]]'' speaks with exceedingly purple prose for a "humble sailor".

* Parodied to the extreme with Lucky's three page monologue in ''[[Waiting for Godot]]''. Read through it carefully and there is actually a philosophical point being made, but it is embroidered with so much verbal diaorreah, non-sequitors and just sheer nonsense words that it sounds like a complete load of gibberish.

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** Every character whose consciousness derives (either fully or partially) from a Xehanort will inevitably resort to this, usually for the purpose of monologuing. Master Xehanort gets to deliver a particularly-sesquipedalian two-word insult - "Feckless neophyte" - though the rest of the Xehanort incarnations each have their own chance to try their hands at it.

* Due to her immensely dry dialogue, Shelke from ''[[Final Fantasy]] 7: Dirge of Cerberus'' has been classified as this by fanon.

* [[Morally Ambiguous Doctorate|Dr. Ludger Brink]] does this in ''[[The Dig]]'' to distract an alien monster from eating colleague Maggie Robbins (to no real purpose, as it cannot possibly understand English in any form). In fact, it almost backfires, as the big words prove ''equally'' distracting to player-character Boston Low. When Brink urges Low to hurry up with the rescue, he just mutters, "I'm still trying to figure out what you said."

* [[Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate|Dr. Ludger Brink]] does this in ''[[The Dig]]'' to distract an alien monster from eating colleague Maggie Robbins (to no real purpose, as it cannot possibly understand English in any form). In fact, it almost backfires, as the big words prove ''equally'' distracting to player-character Boston Low. When Brink urges Low to hurry up with the rescue, he just mutters, "I'm still trying to figure out what you said."

{{quote| '''Brink:''' Come here, you phlegm-carapaced slime-faced mucus-brained furry-legged abductor of luminously intelligent but pulchritudinous Earth women!

'''Boston:''' ...

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* Fellow pre-[[Teen Genius]] Jimmy Neutron in ''[[The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron (Animation)|The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron]]'' is also fond of the trope.

* Wind Whistler on ''[[My Little Pony]]''. "This meteorological debabacle is quite anomalous." Peach Blossom too: "I will reconnoiter post-haste and ascertain what has transpired!"

** In the same vein, Twilight Sparkle from ''[[My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (Animation)|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]''.

** In the same vein, Twilight Sparkle from ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (Animation)|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]''.

* Edd in ''[[Ed, Edd n Eddy]]'', often to the annoyance of his less-educated peers.

{{quote| '''Edd:''' Yup? Is that all you have to say for yourself? YUP? No rash attempt to deprive Kevin of his fortune?

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'''Leela:''' So what you think you just explained to us is that -

'''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 [[~~Laymans~~ 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.

* 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 (Animation)|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.")

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* Older economists are infamous for their extremely long book titles. You Adam Smith wrote ''The Wealth of Nations''? Try ''An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations''. Yeah, baby. Economics as a science also has the most (initially) confusing terminology of any science.

** For example, the interest rate for loans from the Federal Reserve to banks is called the ''Discount Rate''. ''Seriously?''

* [[Older Than Dirt]]: This seems to be a characteristic of ancient Mesopotamian religious poetry. Apparently, the scribes who wrote them consulted ancient dictionaries for the express purpose of using very obscure words and wildly obsolete grammar to [[Mind Screw]] [[Viewers ~~Are~~ Morons|their audience]].

* [[Older Than Dirt]]: This seems to be a characteristic of ancient Mesopotamian religious poetry. Apparently, the scribes who wrote them consulted ancient dictionaries for the express purpose of using very obscure words and wildly obsolete grammar to [[Mind Screw]] [[Viewers are Morons|their audience]].

* Norse Skalds had the habit of describing really simple objects by complex multi-component metaphors, filling their poetry with literary riddles that were deliberately hard to decipher.

** An example would be "Beowulf", or Björn(Bear). Bears like honey, they prey on it. Bees make honey. Wolves are predators. Bears are like wolves to the bees, therefore Bee-wolf.

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