Definition of polysyllable in English:

noun

• A polysyllabic word.

  Example sentences

  • ‘Lawyers are notorious for lawyer-speak; my own alternate profession, medicine, has a weakness for Latin polysyllables, forever rechristening diseases and body parts for which simple English words already exist.’
  • ‘So far as I know, this particular Finnish polysyllable never made it into any of Tolkien's languages.’
  • ‘Gary Sauer-Thompson asks about ‘Anzacs, regionalism and national identity’, with powerful illustrations to break up his challenging polysyllables.’
  • ‘The latest finding is that the SMS generation is unable to communicate in polysyllables or even in complete sentences.’
  • ‘In general, the contrast of monosyllables and polysyllables (suspended in the five-word line eight) creates a strong balance.’
  • ‘Even on radio, their rhetorical style sounds windy, verbose, addicted to polysyllables for their own sake.’
  • ‘The Daily Mail, high on moral tone, low on polysyllables?’
  • ‘A word containing many syllables is a polysyllable or polysyllabic word, such as selectivity and utilitarianism.’
  • ‘Their choice of words is correspondingly simple, lacking the tension between polysyllables and monosyllables observed in the stanzas from ‘The Triumph of Time’.’
  • ‘In the background I overhear Tom and Trisha exchanging a conversation in melodious polysyllables.’
  • ‘For all their - almost - excess of expression, the lines are cadenced and paid out in a sort of listening rhythm, a very personal, measured gather and tumble of polysyllables, after the unhearing jack-hammer blast of the early poems.’