Two of my favourite words — both of which sound like medical diagnoses you’d rather not Google.
Circumlocution is the art of saying something simple in the most roundabout way possible. It’s the long, meandering scenic route of language. Why say “meeting” when you can say “collaborative synergy alignment session”?
Sesquipedalianism, meanwhile, refers to the love (or overuse) of very long words — literally “a foot and a half long.” I first met it while reading The Surgeon of Crowthorne, that gloriously eccentric tale about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary and the man who contributed from inside Broadmoor. Proof, perhaps, that words can drive you mad. Or the mad drive words?
Both traits thrive in business and tech — industries that adore linguistic puffery. We don’t “fix problems”; we “optimise cross-functional value streams.”
So maybe what we’re all practising these days isn’t thought leadership at all, but a bit of prestidigitation — a verbal magic trick to make something sound cleverer than it is.
Moi?
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