The boat flowed swiftly down the current passing various cities and towns along the way, many with sesquipedalian names that even the locals had trouble pronouncing the long complicated names of their own city. It had been a trend, a couple centuries ago. To put as many syllables as possible into a city name. The more syllables meant the more status. But now, many of these places were near ruins. So much for their names. The man chuckled to himself glancing back at the unconscious nobleman's son. He too would learn that his name meant nothing now. He would not be able to order anybody around just because he was the son of a famous war lord.
Sesquipedalian - 1: having many syllables : long 2: using long words.
History Behind the Word -Horace, the Roman poet known for his satire, was merely being gently ironic when he cautioned young poets against using sesquipedalian verba--"words a foot and a half long"--in his book Ars poetica, a collection of maxims about writing. But in the 17th century, English literary critics decided the word "sesquipedalian" could be very useful for lambasting writers using unnecessarily long words. Robert Southey used it to make two jibes at once when he wrote "the verses of [16th-century English poet] English Hawes are as full of barbarous sesquipedalian Latinisms, as the prose of [the 18th-century periodical] the Rambler." The Latin prefix sesqui- is used in modern English to mean "one and a half times," as in "sesquicentennial" (a 150th anniversary.)
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