Condoleezza Rice, speaking of Iraq in a recent interview, used not one but two double-dactyl words.

"Then? Saddam Hussein … murdered his own people, terrorized his neighbors and sought weapons of mass destruction. Today? You have a multiethnic, multiconfessional democracy that isn't threatening its neighbors."

"Is it done? No. … but we are moving in an undeniably different direction in what is, some would say, geostrategically, the most important country in the Arab world."

understand the second word, but "multiconfessional"? What's that?

quote:

understand the second word, but "multiconfessional"? What's that?

I thought I was the only one who wouldn't know.

Isn't that what they have in large Catholic cathedrals? A sinner's assembly line?

multiconfessional

"Of, or tolerant of, many religions" (link).

It's a strange word for her to use because it doesn't even appear in Onelook.

Not in OED either, though they updated this part of the alphabet just a few years ago. The word seems to be reasonably common. I've alerted the folks at OED.

Well, in all fairness, it only gets 23,800 hits.

it only gets 23,800 hits

And the e-word gets 7,040.

I wonder how many of those are ours.

And, for the record, "e-word" has 1,840,000 hits. I know... I know...