Word: sesquipedalian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Although English was his third language—he picked up French and Spanish early in his continent-hopping cosmopolitan childhood—he was renowned for his erudite, highly refined, and idiosyncratic prose, often ridiculed by detractors as “sesquipedalian.” The son of an oil-baron millionaire, he attended posh private schools in Paris, London, and New York, and graduated from Yale a talented and ambitious young writer...
...scripted by Carroll Carroll. The writer shaped and sharpened (that is to say, softened) Crosby's public personality, as other scripters would do in the films. Giddins says Carroll allowed "Bing to be Bing, only more so." He added flourishes to Crosby's facility for mixing sesquipedalian phraseology with hipster slang. One tangy aside was apparently not written by Carroll. After a solo by one-armed trumpeter Wingy Malone, Bing quipped, "Man, that was dirtier than a Russian horse-doctor's valise...