How to Use Polysyllabic Words*

Technical writings rely on the extensive use of polysyllabic words. Such words contain in the strict sense more than three syllables and the number of syllables increases whenever further classification of complex phenomena is needed. Taxonomy, in particular, deals with quite long polysyllabic words. Use of specific terminology appears to be quite convenient for small groups of scholars specializing within narrow fields. However, rarely used words if not properly explained could deter the broad audience from grasping the proposed ideas and evaluating the work done. In some academic circles, scholars may state that the ones who do not understand their manuscripts should learn more to reach supposedly higher levels of understanding on the subject matter. Such a statement is exaggerated and demonstrates elitist attempts to disguise certain topics as being complex and difficult to grasp by the average reader. In most cases, there are proper ways to explain in simple terms even the most complicated studies. Nevertheless, the construction of new technical words with the addition of prefixes and suffixes as well as concatenation and modification of the roots of words is a common practice. Some examples of polysyllabic adjectives, nouns, and verbs are given below: arbitrary, beneficial, computational, experimental, numerical, professional, theoretical; analysis, development, festivity, measurement, taxonomy, tetrahedron, terminology; appreciate, disseminate, elaborate, investigate, manipulate, participate, visualize, etc. Polysyllabic words can be formed as a result of concatenation of monosyllabic, disyllabic, or trisyllabic ones: electromagnetism, nevertheless, readability, spectrophotometer. Addition of selected prefixes/suffixes increases the number of syllables and the complexity of the words thus formed. The construction of antonym pairs by adding prefixes is one private case: compensated – uncompensated, continuous – discontinuous, conventional – unconventional, deterministic – nondeterministic, multiplexing – demultiplexing, understanding – misunderstanding. Polysyllabic technical terms often contain parts originating from other languages such as Latin, French, etc.: architecture, biotechnology, engineering, management, mathematics, philosophy, technology; approximation, calculation, characterization, classification, concatenation, concentration, derivation, differentiation, estimation, evaluation, immunization, information, integration, preservation, regularization, telecommunications, transportation, verification. The longest technical word included in standard dictionaries is 45-letter word containing 13 syllables: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, which is just another word for silicosis. When counting the number of syllables in a word, the letter Y is often a vowel or diphthong in syllables, as in gyroscope, hysteresis, polysyllabic, psychology. The addition of prefixes/suffixes for an intended meaning must be performed with a good understanding of basic rules being kept in creating polysyllabic words, for instance: incomprehensible, incomprehensibly, incomprehensibility, incomprehensibleness, etc. Otherwise, a choice of a polysyllabic construction proves incorrect, such as uncomprehendable. The spelling in parts (SIP) is a phonics technique allowing the division of polysyllabic terms into separate parts which assists the decoding process of the individual parts. Using sample texts as a reference, two indirect measures of the complexity of academic texts are the average number of syllables per word and the average number of words per sentence.