• sesquibimillennial •
Pronunciation: ses-kwê-bai-mê-len-i-êl • Hear it!Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: 2500th anniversary.
Notes: Today's Good Word would be the adjective accompanying sesquibimillennium, if such a word existed. You will not find today's word in any dictionary because English-speaking people did not exist 2500 years ago. It was the time of Ancient Greeks, Romans, Persians, Hittites, and the like. It appears only twice in a search of Google. It is a properly constructed word, and most appropriate word to come as the 2500th word of the Good Word series.
In Play: Dr. Goodword has been working on his word-of-the-day series now for eleven years at alphaDictionary. In that time he has created 2500 Good Words, including today's, which may be used legitimately this way: "In 1971 the sesquibimillennial anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire was celebrated throughout Iran." Rome would have celebrated its sesquibicentennium in 1747.
Word History: This Good Word is made up from the Latin word sesqui "one half more" + bi- "twice, double" + millennial "thousand years", created by analogy with sesquicentennial, bicentennial and millennial. Latin did not contain this word because Romans knew nothing of events 2500 years before them. Sesqui is a contraction of semi- "half" + que "and". The same Proto-Indo-European word that produced semi- turned up in Greek as hemi, as in the word English borrowed from Greek, hemisphere. Millennial is the adjective for millennium, a reduction of mille "thousand" + annus "year". (We owe a debt of gratitude to Luciano Eduardo de Oliveira, a Good Word editor for many years, for the creation of today's very appropriate Good Word.)