English has a special talent for taking perfectly simple ideas and giving them a dramatic makeover that nobody asked for. Instead of saying something straightforward, it often borrows from Latin or Greek, tapes a few syllables together, and sends it out into the world wearing formal attire.
Need to say “250 years”? English could absolutely do that. But where’s the fun in clarity? Instead, we get semiquincentennial, a word that sounds like it requires a warm-up routine. It’s as if English looked at simplicity and said, “Yes, but what if it had more vowels and emotional weight?”
Imagine the insanity of autocorrect if you used voice calling to invite someone to a semiquincentennial party. Even my Word document is even telling me I am spelling it wrong by the appearance of the dreaded wavy, red underline. However, a quick check with AP Standard Rules tells me the word is un-hyphenated, even though a hyphen makes the wavy, red line go away.
As a former English teacher, I have heard every complaint imaginable about the absurdity of our mother tongue. I dutifully defended it for all those years with half-hearted excuses. But now that I am retired, I can honestly say standard English rests on a foundation of pretentious rules promulgated by an unseen cabal of tweed jacketed nerds.
They can’t allow a straightforward expression to get in the way of academic affectation. How about the ironic hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia, which means a “fear of long words?”
Part of this comes from history. English has been influenced by so many languages—Latin, French, Germanic roots—that it sometimes feels like a linguistic potluck where everyone brought their most complicated dish. The result is a vocabulary where simple and complex versions of the same idea coexist, and the complex one usually shows up in official invitations.
And yet, somehow, we endure it. We can say “Happy 250th Anniversary” and “Happy Semiquincentennial” and expect both to be correct.
So, what exactly is going on inside this linguistic skyscraper? Let’s break it down. The word comes from Latin roots, because of course it does.
First, we have semi, meaning “half.” Easy enough.
Then comes quincentennial, which itself is a bit of a nesting doll. Quinque means “five,” centum means “hundred,” and annus (via ennial) relates to “years.” Put it all together, and you get “five hundred years.”
Now take half of that with semi, and voilà: 250 years. We could have settled for something modest, but we went full Latin maximalist.
Just think. We are only 25 short years from the big Bicenterquasquigenary Celebration. I’m not kidding – look it up.
