2. A person or thing that is a foot and a half in height or length: "The hikers were startled to see the footprints in the snow that were obviously sesquipedalians in size and which made the hikers wonder if a mountain monster lived in the area."
Here is an old proverb: While bryophytic plants are typically encountered as substrata of earthly or mineral matter in concreted state, discrete substrata elements occasionally display a roughly spherical configuration which, in the presence of suitable gravitational and other effects, lends itself to a combined translatory and rotational motion. One notices in such cases an absence of the otherwise typical accretion of bryophyta.
The proverb means: “A rolling stone gathers no moss.”
What was a young man saying to a young woman in the following sesquipedalian?
They shine more rutilent than ligulin—those labial components that surround thy pericranial orifice, wherein denticulations niveous abound!
Commingle them with my equivalents! Let like with like nectareously converge! From the predestined confluence some sempiternal rapture must emerge!
As Willard Espy put it, “After all, he was only asking her for a kiss. Jargon may be useful to hide one’s real thinking, or lack of it, but it can be downright self-defeating if you are trying to persuade someone to do something. A young man learned that when he addressed these words to the maiden he loved, only to be shown the door.”
Both of the foregoing were compiled by Willard R. Espy.
The letters MS refer to two things: One is a debilitating and surprisingly widespread affliction that renders the sufferer barely able to perform the simplest task; the other is a disease. In other words, MS stands for the name of a well-known software company or for the disease Multiple Sclerosis.
A reference to the use of long words; especially when verbal construction utilizing less amplification might represent a more naturally efficacious phraseology and as a result, verba obscura.
Enjoy your play with words by translating these into their “simple-English proverb” forms.
- Verba Obscura #1: Those of deficient intellect usually press forward where members of the heavenly host dread to venture.
- Verba Obscura #2: The time to smite the ferrous metal is when it is at a super thermic temperature.
- Verba Obscura #3: A vociferous domesticated carnivorous animal belonging to the genus Canis generally is not prone to put his dental equipment to use when it is busy making a noise.
- Verba Obscura #4: The feathered creature that appears before the usual time captures the small, creeping, legless animal.
- Verba Obscura #5: The upsetting of a container of a white, nourishing fluid does not call for expressions of bereavement.
- Verba Obscura #6: Conduct a careful survey before you commit yourself to a springing, forward movement.
- Verba Obscura #7: It is one thing to conduct a hoofed, four-legged animal to a colorless and odorless fluid but it is another matter to force it to imbibe.
- Verba Obscura #8: It is impossible to create a small money receptacle made of a soft, tenacious thread from the auricle of a female porker.
- Verba Obscura #9: The Creator lends valuable assistance to those who practice self-aid.
- Verba Obscura #10: An intermixture or succession of different things seasons and flavors a person's existence.
The translations of the “verba obscura” are located at this Translations of the "verba obscura" page.