Snowball sentences, also called rhopalic sentences or rhopalisms, are sentences in which each word is longer than the next, usually starting with a one-letter word, and increasing by one letter with each word. Dmitri Borgmann offered this example in his book Language on Vacation:
I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting; nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality, counterbalancing indecipherability, transcendentalizes intercommunications’ incomprehensibleness.
The sentence is 20 words long, ending with a 20-letter word. Borgmann came up with a 24-word rhopalism, which he admitted was “a trifle less lucid.” See what you think:
I am not very happy acting pleased whenever prominent scientists overmagnify intellectual enlightenment, stoutheartedly outvociferating ultrareactionary retrogressionists, characteristically unsupernaturalizing transubstantiatively philosophicoreligious incomprehensiblenesses anthropomorphologically. Pathologicopsychological!
Incomprehensiblenesses indeed. This snowball sentence, which goes up to 17, is by Alan Truscott:
I am the only dummy player, perhaps, planning maneuvers calculated brilliantly, nevertheless outstandingly pachydermatous, notwithstanding unconstitutional unprofessionalism.
How far can you get in constructing a snowball sentence? Share your creations in the comments below. I thought it would be interesting to try to construct an alphabetic sentence that is also a snowball sentence. Here’s what I came up with:
A BB can daze enemy forces, grazing helmeted insurgent jackbooted knucklehead legionnaires, mischievously, noninjuriously overdramatizing prorevolutionary quarrelsomenesses.
Can you improve on these examples?