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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
polysyllabic
adjective
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ She resists the polysyllabic playfulness that marks the writing of her brother, Bill, but she writes with clarity and style.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Polysyllabic

Polysyllabic \Pol`y*syl*lab"ic\, Polysyllabical \Pol`y*syl*lab"ic*al\, a. [Gr. ?; poly`s many + ? syllable: cf. F. polysyllabique.] Pertaining to a polysyllable; containing, or characterized by, polysyllables; consisting of more than three syllables.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
polysyllabic

1650s (implied in polysyllabical), from Medieval Latin polysyllabicus, from Greek polysyllabikos; see poly- + syllabic.

Wiktionary
polysyllabic

a. 1 (context of a word English) Having more than one syllable; having multiple or many syllables. 2 (context of spoken or written language English) Characterized by or consisting of words having numerous syllables. n. A word having more than one syllable

WordNet
polysyllabic
  1. adj. having or characterized by words of more than three syllables

  2. (of words) long and ponderous; having many syllables; "sesquipedalian technical terms" [syn: sesquipedalian]

Usage examples of "polysyllabic".

Baseball offered a comfortable seat to the polysyllabic wonders who quoted dead authors and blathered on about the poetry of motion.

Her wide smile of understanding looked like a grimace to him, and the polysyllabic word that rolled out of her mouth was not only unpronounceable, it was almost incomprehensible.

He was busy constructing another long, polysyllabic and largely unintelligible chat on the nature of the universe.

Pardon these polysyllabic reflections, Beloved, but I never contemplate these dear fellow-creatures of ours without a delicious sense of superiority to them and to all arrested embryos of intelligence, in which I have no doubt you heartily sympathize with me.

The doctor continued his mini-lecture, but now he upgraded my intelligence and threw in a few polysyllabic words.

But when the inflectional form of language became so far advanced as to have its scholars and grammarians, they seem to have united in extirpating all such polysynthetical or polysyllabic monsters, as devouring invaders of the aboriginal forms.

I recalled from my reading, it marked the tomb of a Ramesside prince with a polysyllabic name.

He was abusing Big Brother, he was denouncing the dictatorship of the Party, he was demanding the immediate conclusion of peace with Eurasia, he was advocating freedom of speech, freedom of the Press, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought, he was crying hysterically that the revolution had been betrayed -- and all this in rapid polysyllabic speech which was a sort of parody of the habitual style of the orators of the Party, and even contained Newspeak words: more Newspeak words, indeed, than any Party member would normally use in real life.

Just when he thought he'd got her pegged as a do-gooding social butterfly she tossed in a polysyllabic from an Economics Major.

In general, however, the neo-fin chooses for a name a sound he likes, usually a polysyllabic word with strong alternating vowels and consonants.

She got a grip on the Espinosa like it was her firstborn about to be repoed by a dwarf with a polysyllabic name.

The theater critic from the Cumberland Ledger would come and go into polysyllabic ecstasies, as he was paid to do over any local play.