"MULTILOQUENT VERBOSITY This week I stumbled upon a review in an
American magazine, The Academy, dated 1 October 1881. It was of E W
White's Cameos from the Silver-land; or the Experiences of a Young
Naturalist in the Argentine Republic, a classic work of economic
geography and natural history. The reviewer complained, "The author
is terribly fond of long words. To him plants become bosquetish,
plains are sabulous, cattle are meat-bearing beeves, dead men are
cadavers, parrots are psittacs. The Republic is 'a vast cerealic
and frugiferous as well as a lanigerous and pelliferous region'."
A glossary - "bosquetish": of bushes or woods (related to "bosky");
"sabulous": sandy; "psittac": parrot (the review is one of only two
citations for the word in the Oxford English Dictionary's entry,
the other being from 1425); "cerealic": of cereals (the only
example in the OED); "frugiferous": fruit-bearing: "lanigerous":
wool-bearing (related to "lanolin", from Latin "lana", wool); and
"pelliferous": this is unknown to the Oxford English Dictionary or
any other source I've checked. I'm guessing the author created it
from the old word "pell" for an animal's hide (a close relative of
"pelt", from Latin "pellis", skin, leather, or parchment), from
which came the equally rare "pell-monger", a dealer in skins and
furs; from context the word means "rich in fur-bearing animals"."
- from Michael Quinion's World Wide Words - an excellent resource regarding words and language. Consider subscribing to his newslist (http://www.worldwidewords.org/maillist/index.htm) and have a look at his site (http://www.worldwidewords.org/).
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