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.
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