125th Anniversary; What's the Good Word ?

The Indian National Congress turned 125 on Monday, the December 28, 2009. A huge billboard appeared in front of Priyadarshini Park, near our house in Mumbai commemorating the event, with photographs of Mahatma Gandhi….. Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajeev Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi.

The Congress party is indeed quite old and has an illustrious history. 125 years is quite a long time. We are all familiar with silver, golden, diamond, platinum jubilees (in the ascending order of their prices) and even the centenary celebrations. I had faintly remembered a word used for 150 years, but had never known what a 125th anniversary is called.

i did a bit of research (in other words, Googled) and was startled to find out the names for different anniversaries. Unlike the easy to remember precious stones and metals, the three digit anniversaries are heavily rooted in Latin. And most of them are quite a tongue-twisters. Sample this.

The 125th anniversary is called ‘Quasquicentennial Anniversary’, a monstrous word indeed. With a little bit of more research, i ascertained that there indeed is a short history behind this terminology.

The 150th anniversary is called ‘Sesquicentennial Anniversary’. i was some what familiar with this as the University of Bombay had used this word during their 150th year celebrations. The word ‘sesquicentennial’ is derived from the ‘semis que’ meaning ‘and a half’. The two words ‘semis’ and ‘que’ were combined and shortened to produce ‘sesqui’.

The Latin word for ‘a fourth’ or ‘one-fourth’ is either ‘quarta’ or ‘quadrans’. So we get either ‘quarta que’ or ‘quadrans que’. Combining the two words we would have got ‘quartquicentennial’ or ‘quadquicentennial’ to mean 125. But linquists thought of shortening it in such a way as to bring it closest to ‘sesquicentennial’, and the word ‘quasquicentennial’ was born. Moreover, it is also the least ugliest of the set.

And by the way, the word for 175 years is ‘Septaquintaquinquecentennial’.