Senior managing editor and logophile Andy Hollandbeck reveals the sometimes surprising roots of common English words and phrases. Remember: Etymology tells us where a word comes from, but not what it means today.
The United States’ 250th anniversary is fast approaching, and short-term fireworks stores are popping up all over. A 250th anniversary is also called a semiquincentennial, and though it’s a word, these seven syllables of Latinate goodness are secretly a mathematical formula. Here’s how the word breaks down, starting from the end.
The -ennial part of semiquincentennial comes from annus, Latin for “year.” Without annus — which rhymes with “fan us” and not, well, you get the picture — we wouldn’t have the words annual, anniversary, perennial, annuity, millennium, and a slew of other year-related words. (The shifts between a and e come down to esoteric Latin morphological rules.)
Once we’ve got “year” in there, the math truly begins: Cent comes from centum “100.” I wrote about this and listed a number of related “cent” words in my 100th In a Word column in 2020. Put these together and you get centennial, marking 100 years. I should note here that centennial existed for a while primarily as an adjective (as in “a centennial celebration”); it didn’t take off as noun until 1876, which language purists then would have called the nation’s centenary.
English has a word-forming part that means “one-and-a-half,” sesqui-; the nation’s sesquicentennial — marking one-and-a-half hundred years — was in 1926. We don’t, however, have a similar sequence that means “two-and-a-half,” so we must approach the 250th anniversary from a different angle.
Quin- (as in quintuplets) comes from quinque, “five.” Quin– + –cent– + –ennial = 5 x 100 years. So a quincentennial indicates something lasting 500 years, but that’s twice what we need.
The semi (e.g., semicircle, semifinal) is from a Latin word for “half.” Which means that, from left to right, semiquincentennial is ½ x 5 x 100 years. Do the math, and you get 250 years.
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Comments
Semiquincentennial. I’ve had to practice saying the word to make it sound easy. Still, most people don’t know what it is until it’s explained it’s the correct term for America’s 250th birthday—even now! 7 syllables that hardly roll off the tongue, yet the word for the 125th (sesquicentennial in 1926) actually sounds even worse,
Ricky Ricardo might have said “AY-YI-YI-YI-YI-YI! This WORD has some ‘splainin’ to do!”