Growing up in Kentucky, where the state religion seems to be basketball, Martha played a lot of rounds of horse, where players compete to make baskets from the same court positions, shot for shot. If you miss, you get a letter from the word horse. If you get all the letters, you lose. Basketball star Steph Curry instead challenged a bunch of high school students to a game of sesquipedalian. We’ve talked about long words like that before. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “The Much Longer Version of Basketball Horse”
I grew up in Kentucky where the state religion is basketball, and so I played many, many rounds of horse as a kid. Did you play horse? A little bit, yeah. Yeah. You know how you do it. You throw the ball through the hoop, and if you get that… And then the other person has to throw it from the same place you threw it? Yeah. And if they miss, then they get a letter and it goes H-O-R-S-E. And if you get all the letters, then you lose, right? I see. Gotcha.
I thought of that the other day because I was watching a video of Steph Curry, the basketball player, who dropped in on a group of students who were playing basketball. And of course, they were all really excited that this basketball superstar was there. And they thought that he was going to challenge them to a game of horse.
But he said, no, I’m not going to challenge you to a game of horse. I’m going to challenge you to a game of sesquipedalian. Give them a chance.
Yes.
Well, no, he, of course, won.
Of course, yeah.
How old were they?
Probably high school.
High school, but still a story they’ll talk about the whole lives.
Oh, my gosh, yes.
Yes.
And it reminded me of how much I love the word sesquipedalian, which comes from Latin words that mean literally a foot and a half long. The sesquicentennial, 150, and the pedalean is like all those pedal words, all those words that have to do with your feet.
So a sesquipedalean word is a word that’s a foot and a half long. Foot and a half long.
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