Sesquipedalian Examples

Sesquipedalian writing or speech is writing that uses "big words"-or long words with many syllables. Sometimes, sesquipedalian is used to refer to multi-syllabic words that writers have made up. Sometimes, it refers to writing that is characterized by many multi-syllabic words, such as scientific or medical jargon.

From Shakespeare's Love's Labour Lost:

Cost. O! they have lived long on the alms basket of words. I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word; for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon.

From Mary Poppins:

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious. If you say it loud enough, you'll always sound precocious. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

An abstract of an article appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine in December 2014:

The ability of HDL to accept cholesterol from macrophages (cholesterol efflux capacity) is a key part of reverse cholesterol transport. In nearly 3000 adults, higher quartiles of baseline cholesterol efflux capacity were associated with lower rates of cardiovascular events.

Quotation from Allen Greenspan, former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve:

Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtue, not vices. It is this superlatively moral system that the welfare statists propose to improve upon by means of preventative law, snooping bureaucrats, and the chronic goad of fear.