Philster401
Maester
Yes not as much now and days but I'm pretty sure that I have seen older books like The Once and Future King had them I think but I'm not exactly sure.
That depends on what you're trying to portray.I think most of the time actual word choice is not an issue. Why use overly difficult words when you can use everyday language?
My 'Once and future king' omnibus has no explanatory footnotes, so that must have been a special edition - perhaps for schools. But as to 'why' one would use a multisyllabic word when there was a simpler one available, sometimes it's to prevent repetition of a word, sometimes because synonyms are never quite identical in meaning, however similar, even if the difference is only in the emotional response of the author, but quite often it's how the rhythm of a word integrates into the rhythm of an entire sentence. This is almost but not quite poetry, and I for one attempt to make my text sound right, and are paced to their content.