By Bob Bumcrot
According to David S. Potter, the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Michigan and the son of long-time Norfolk residents David and Pebble Potter, “The Romans would have been most comfortable with this word, meaning halfway to five hundred years.” Potter, who was at New College, Oxford, for five years, is the author of a number of learned studies and, most recently, of a lavishly-illustrated “coffee table book” on all the Roman emperors.
What’s wrong with “sesquibicentennial”? Let’s do the math. The prefix “sesqui” means one and a half. So “sesquibicentennial” would connote one and a half times two hundred, or three hundred years. And “bisesquicentennial” would mean twice one hundred fifty years, again making a tricentennial.