Victory Manual

Sesquipedalian. I don’t think I’ll ever fall out of obsession with that word. The definition is itself. It is its own definition. There’s something so satisfying about that. But that’s not what this is about.

Sesquipedalian is far from being a common vocabulary term. The same holds true of its Japanese equivalent, “多音節”. In fact, I showed the word “多音節” to an average Japanese adult, and they hadn’t ever heard the term. However, they could understand what it meant based on the kanji it’s composed of!

多 - many
音 - sound
節 - section; part

“Many sound parts”, or, “Polysyllabic”. A word with many syllables. Basically, a big word.

Unlike the average Japanese speaker, the average English speaker wouldn’t know what “sesquipedalian” meant having just been presented with the word on paper. The short-coming is in our primary education, which lacks in-depth study of Latin and Greek roots. Even if we had been well-grounded in the fundamentals of dissecting words, we might be able to easily break down the term into:

“sesqui” meaning “one and a half” and
“pedal” meaning “foot”

However, now we just have “a foot and a half”, which, come to think of it, isn’t sufficient enough to comprehend the nuance of the word completely. We’d have to know that the term comes from Horace’s sesquipedalia verba, meaning, “words a foot and a half long.” [1]

Japanese may be a long, uphill trek in learning, but it’s not an impossible language to conquer. In fact, as time passes, you may find it easier than your native language! You start to question the logic behind your mother tongue. English is an especially mighty beast to tangle with. But I’m glad there are kanji to help us out in learning Japanese.

Source [1]: http://wordinfo.info