By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy
Here’s an idea to clarify your meaning and enhance your authority. Reading time: 3:14
The sesquipedalophobiacs are coming! The sesquipedalophobiacs are coming! Hail to the sesquipedalophobiacs. Also known by its 15-syllable cousin hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia.
The Wizard of Oz gave up on using big words.
Still trying to spit out that mouthful? No wonder leaders strive for clarity. They hate big words. They even have a name for the fear of long words: sesquipedalophobia.
(Hey, there’s a long word for everything, even a long word for the fear of long words.)
Leaders seek clarity and embrace the biblical reference (Ecclesiastes 6:11) when Solomon observed: “The more the words, the less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone?”
They agree with President Dwight Eisenhower’s observation that “an intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.”
And these haters of long words -sesquipedalophobiacs — acknowledge Thomas Jefferson’s point that “the most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” Continue reading
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