Word: sesquipedalian
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...winter afternoon, the train was sliding swiftly south toward Vermont. Newsmen on the train were bored, listless, let down after the four days of pressure in Ottawa. They had watched 12,000,000 Canadians having their greatest day since the King & Queen visited in 1939; had heard the sturdily sesquipedalian Prime Minister of England wow the House of Commons with his oak-hearted phrases, with a tactful tribute (in French) to the loyal French-Canadians; they had listened as he recalled the 1940 prophecy of French generals, that "in three weeks England will have her neck rung like a chicken...
...echoes from outside began to reecho in Congress. Maryland's Senator Tydings cried that members who voted to go home should be kept there by their constituents. "I couldn't vote for myself if I ran away from duty at this time," declared Arizona's sesquipedalian Senator Ashurst. Sam Rayburn heard much of the same from his colleagues in the House, growled that "a great many of them, if there was a secret ballot, would vote to adjourn. ..." First sign that Congress' public sense of duty might prevail sprang from an even greater phenomenon: a fear...
...Ariz, county jail. In 1904 he interrupted his law studies at University of Michigan long enough to marry the young Irish widow who managed Flagstaff's weather bureau. In 1912 he was elected to the U. S. Senate, has been there ever since, famous, admired for his fluent sesquipedalian style-the elegant, eloquent Henry Fountain Ashurst. Into wifely anonymity faded the little Irish woman, beloved by the few who knew her kindness...
Record readers settled down to several hours' solid entertainment, for no man in Congress has such a gift for making two long words do the work of one short one. The range of his sesquipedalian verbal achievements spread from masterly Johnsonian periods on the occasion of "Remarks of Senator Ashurst on the Steamship President Grant on Saturday, October 26, 1935. Presenting to Vice President Garner a Pair of Sox to be Worn When He Has an Audience with the Emperor of Japan," to sombre views on mankind's future, viz.: "It is still an open question...
...hippopotamus, which looks like its sesquipedalian name, is actually so called because a Greek traveler thought it resembled a "horse of the river." Like horses, most hippos are kind and gentle, though a few are extremely cruel at times. Ordinarily docile is Rosie, 15-year-old, 3,000-lb. female hippo in Manhattan's Central Park Zoo, who last week gave birth for the first time. Despite zookeepers' precautions, Rosie butted her newly-born unmercifully, refused it food. The baby hippo, a 52-lb. male, was moved to a separate cage, fed goat's milk and cream...