Near the end of the 1500s, a word entered English that was destined for nearly universal and permanent…obscurity. The word would never, in its centuries of (lack of) usage, become anything more than a literary curiosity, used (when it was used at all) mostly to make a joke. The word is “perissology” (told you it was obscure).
Hopefully the above paragraph is itself a minor example of “perissology,” which means using more words than you need. Since it means exactly the same thing as “wordy,” but has a lot more letters and syllables, you can probably guess how it might be used humorously. In fact it may the be length champion among English words that mean “using too many words.” The next longest ones I can find that still mean the same thing are “battology” and “pleonasm.” It’s true — all of these ridiculously obscure words mean “using too many words.” I don’t know why English has so many words to simply explain the process of overwriting, which I’m certain is exceedingly rare and hardly ever encountered in reality regardless of how hard you look, even if you check under rocks and inside hollow trees, where you’re basically wasting your time because how often do you find a word under a rock anyway.
“Perissology” is derived from the Greek word “perissos,” which meant beyond the usual number; extra. Perissos was used as the basis of the Latin word (it was a Greek word but adopted into Latin) “perissologia”, which is the direct basis for “perissology.” “Perisso-” is also used in some other equally obscure English words: “perissosyllabic” and “perissodactyl.” “Perissosyllabic” is a like of poetry that has too many syllables, and “perissodactyl” is any grazing animal with hooves made up of an odd number of toes. I’m not sure why we needed a word for that kind of animal (which includes horses by the way), but it even has an opposite: “artiodactyl,” which is a grazing animal with an even number of toes (which includes deer, goats, and cattle).
I mentioned humorous applications of “perissology”, and here’s a good one from 1856. It’s from Letters to Squire Pedant by Samuel Hoshour:
“His inscience of avitous justicements, and of lexicology, his perissology and battology, imparted to his tractation of his cause, an imperspicuity which rendered it immomentous to the jurator audients.”
That’s describing a lawyer who’s ignorant about precedent, doesn’t know much about words, and repeats himself too much, and as a result the jury considered his case trivial.
