Meanings
plural twenty-five cent words
- CanadaUSdatedSynonym of ten-dollar word.
The old man chuckled. “Well, you can bandy twenty-five cent words all you want, but— Say! we’ve never had a talk like this before, have we? […]”
1950, Jack Kerouac, chapter 11, in The Town and the City, New York: Harcourt, published 1983, page 3312 more examples
1988, Howard Rosenthal, Not With My Life I Don’t: Preventing Your Suicide and That of Others, Muncie, Indiana: Accelerated Development, Inc., Chapter 4, p. 18, Some of the most incredible cases I have ever worked with involve the act of pulling strands of hair from one’s own head. Psychiatrists and psychologists have a twenty-five cent word for this behavior. They call it Trichotillomania.
Remember that while the English language has lots of “twenty-five cent” words like perturb or effrontery, statuesque or decorous, it also has lots of essential short, sturdy words like of or but, say or stop or glow.
2015, Barbara Baig, Spellbinding Sentences, Blue Ash, Ohio: Writer’s Digest Books, Section 2, Chapter 4, p. 37Synonyms: ten-dollar word
Synonyms & antonyms
nounSynonym of ten-dollar word.
Cite this entry
twenty-five cent word. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/twenty-five%20cent%20word
“twenty-five cent word.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/twenty-five%20cent%20word. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “twenty-five cent word,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/twenty-five%20cent%20word.
Source: twenty-five cent word on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.