DIRECTORY OF BEAUTIFUL WORDS
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DIRECTORY OF OBSCURITY
The Old, Rare & Unusual
OBSCURE | WEIRD | OBSOLETE
Obscurity WordMap
WORD LISTS SPECIAL FEATURES WORDS FROM OTHER CATEGORIES
- Obscure Words from Language Category
- Nonsense ~ Gibberish ~ Grandiloquent ~ Oddities ~ Whimsical ~ Quirky ~ Bizarre ~ Sensory ~ Boring ~ Hyphenated
WEIRD AND WACKY WORDS
strange and bizarre old and rare words
THE GREAT RESURRECTION
bringing the best obsolete words back
BRINGING BACK
the old, rare & archaic
OBSOLETE WORDS
DIRECTORY OF WORD LISTS
SEE ALSO FROM THE REFERENCE CENTER:
Death March for an Obsolete Word
Classifying Words by Usage - New to Obsolete
Ye Olde Fossils Keep On Kicking
Tracing the Etymology of a Word
- Scent of a Woman From Long Ago
- Obsolete Words For All Your Friends
- Whippersnapper! How We Define Old
- An Ode to the Oddly Obsolete
- Drunken Seance to Raise the Forgotten
- How Grandiloquent Can a Cheeky Logophile Be?
- Do We Put Ice in an Old Fashioned?
- Tossing a Jambled Up Obsolete Word Salad
- Obsolete Words Deserve a Second Chance
- A Merry Ole Archaisms - Beyond Obsolete
SEE ALSO FROM THE REFERENCE CENTER:
Death March for an Obsolete Word
Classifying Words by Usage - New to Obsolete
Ye Olde Fossils Keep On Kicking
Tracing the Etymology of a Word
WHAT IS OBSOLESCENCE?
Language has the philosophy of “use it or lose it.” Coining new words to define the world we live in means we lose touch with words that no longer fit. They become lost and we may only encounter them in literary references or in lists like these. The hard part of revitalizing the obsolete is that people don’t know the words and if you use one, they get all uncomfortable like you are speaking gibberish. Best thing to to do is use the word in a context that makes the meaning obvious. Stress the meaning. Or just add on the definition if someone looks confused.
Each year, 1,000+ words are entered into the English language through an authority like the Oxford English Dictionary. Adding the word is easy - taking it out is harder. Mary O’Neill, managing editor of the Collins English Dictionary - the largest at 2,305 pages - says “We rarely take words out of our dictionaries. If we find that a word has fallen out of general use, or is not used as much as it was before, we usually label such words as ‘obsolete,’ ‘archaic,’ or ‘old-fashioned’ rather than deleting them entirely.”
Print dictionaries are designed for different audiences—from children to second-language learners—so it’s rare for a word to be categorically eliminated. As lexicographer Diane Nicholls says, “If a word isn’t in one dictionary, you’ll probably find it in another if you look at enough of them.”
Lexicographers do have a process for deciding whether it’s fair to label a word as obsolete. The evidence for whether a word is in current use comes from analyzing huge databases of language collected from a wide range of sources including academic journals, novels, newspapers, magazines, blogs, emails, social media, TV, and radio. Collins relies on its constantly updated, 4.5 billion-word database of language in current use, while the Oxford refers to its database of 2.5 billion words.
Peter Gilliver, senior editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, explains that the labeling of a word as obsolete relies on conclusive evidence based on a set of rules. To be labeled obsolete the general rule is that there is no quotable evidence of the word since 1930.
Language has the philosophy of “use it or lose it.” Coining new words to define the world we live in means we lose touch with words that no longer fit. They become lost and we may only encounter them in literary references or in lists like these. The hard part of revitalizing the obsolete is that people don’t know the words and if you use one, they get all uncomfortable like you are speaking gibberish. Best thing to to do is use the word in a context that makes the meaning obvious. Stress the meaning. Or just add on the definition if someone looks confused.
Each year, 1,000+ words are entered into the English language through an authority like the Oxford English Dictionary. Adding the word is easy - taking it out is harder. Mary O’Neill, managing editor of the Collins English Dictionary - the largest at 2,305 pages - says “We rarely take words out of our dictionaries. If we find that a word has fallen out of general use, or is not used as much as it was before, we usually label such words as ‘obsolete,’ ‘archaic,’ or ‘old-fashioned’ rather than deleting them entirely.”
Print dictionaries are designed for different audiences—from children to second-language learners—so it’s rare for a word to be categorically eliminated. As lexicographer Diane Nicholls says, “If a word isn’t in one dictionary, you’ll probably find it in another if you look at enough of them.”
Lexicographers do have a process for deciding whether it’s fair to label a word as obsolete. The evidence for whether a word is in current use comes from analyzing huge databases of language collected from a wide range of sources including academic journals, novels, newspapers, magazines, blogs, emails, social media, TV, and radio. Collins relies on its constantly updated, 4.5 billion-word database of language in current use, while the Oxford refers to its database of 2.5 billion words.
Peter Gilliver, senior editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, explains that the labeling of a word as obsolete relies on conclusive evidence based on a set of rules. To be labeled obsolete the general rule is that there is no quotable evidence of the word since 1930.
WORD CLASSIFICATIONS
See Also:
Classifying a Word by Usage - Defining from the New to the Rare to the Obsolete
DEFINING OLD ENGLISH
Old English words were used before AD 1100 and are so differently spelled from current spelling, or completely different in meaning, as to be virtually a foreign language to modern English speakers. Words like archaic, obsolete) or dated are used to categorize them.
DEFINING MIDDLE ENGLISH
Middle English words were used between circa AD 1100 and circa AD 1470 and also regarded as words from a foreign language. Words like archaic, obsolete) or dated are used to categorize them.
DEFINING ARCHAIC
No longer in use; found only in very old texts. The label archaic is used for words that were once common but are now rare. Archaic implies having the character or characteristics of a much earlier time. Can also apply to a no longer understood definition of a word.
- Examples: the word adyt, meaning "to pay" or definition of yield.” Virtually no one would currently use the word or meaning, and very, very few would understand the word or meaning if it were used in speech or text.
Archaic also denotes “no longer in general use, but still found in some contemporary texts” (e.g. the Bible).
- Examples: the word thou meaning the singular second-person subject; "you"). Generally understood by educated people, but rarely used in current texts or speech.
DEFINING UNFASHIONABLE OR DATED
Unfashionable or dated means still in use, but generally only by older people, and considered unfashionable or superseded, particularly by younger people.
- Examples: the word wireless meaning a "broadcast radio tuner,” or the word gay. In this case you can see that the meaning changed meaning over time. The archaic use of the word denotes "bright", or "happy" while the word now means a homosexual person.
DEFINING OBSOLETE
Obsolete indicates that a word or term is no longer in active use, except, for example, in literary quotation. Obsolete may apply to a word regarded as no longer acceptable or useful even though it is still in existence.
SURVIVAL OF A WORD
Many words that existed in Old English did not survive into Modern English. There are also many words in Modern English that bear little or no resemblance in meaning to the Old English definitions. It is estimated that as much as 80 percent of the lexicon of Old English was lost by the end of the Middle English period, including a large number of words formed by compounding. For example the word bōchūs (meaning 'bookhouse', or 'library'), is obsolete yet we still retain the core component parts of 'book' and 'house.’
Some words have existed in English since the language’s beginning: words like heart, head, man, sun, and the pronoun “I”
- These words were part of the Germanic dialects from which English is derived.
- They can be traced into Proto-Indo-European before it split into the Germanic languages.
Some words have been borrowed from other languages into English.
- We can often pinpoint the first time a word was cited in an English document.
- We can sometimes assume that the word was used in speech earlier than that.
- Even with extensive analysis, experts can only approximate the moment when the word is “born.”
Words are born into the language - they appear in English for the first time when English speakers create them. We could also say that words are “born” when we take a prefix and attach it to another word, like taking the prefix multi– and attaching it to slacking to create the word multislacking.
See Also:
How a Word Gets Coined to Create a Neologism
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
When does a word die? The most obvious answer is whenever people stop using it. in colloquial speech, but it’s well preserved in written text.
How many obsolete words are in the English language? It is difficult to precisely determine but the 1989 version of the Oxford English Dictionary lists 47,156 obsolete words.
What is the difference between archaic and obsolete words?
Archaic words are words that are not used often but appear in scholarly or classic texts. They were commonly used until around 1900. Obsolete words stopped being used after the mid-1700s and would likely not be understood even by a highly educated person.
Do words get removed from the dictionary?
Words are removed from the dictionary when they fall out of use and thus are no longer considered relevant.
How do dictionaries remove words?
The evidence for whether a word is in current use, or citation evidence comes from analyzing huge databases of written and spoken language, collected from a range of sources including academic journals, novels, newspapers, magazines, blogs, emails, social media, TV, and radio.
How many words are in the dictionary?
Colllins has a 4.5 billion-word computer-compiled database of language in current use, while the Oxford English Dictionary has a database of 2.5 billion words.
The Old, Rare & Unusual
OBSCURE | WEIRD | OBSOLETE
Obscurity WordMap
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Content by Kairos ~ @kairosoflife
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Original content © 2021 Copyright, Kairos
A SERIES OF BEAUTIFUL WORDS
Collection of Vocabulary Books, Sites and Resources
Series Homepage | View Sites | Download Books
Words are also posted on twitter under the hashtags #beautifulwords and #wordoftheday and shared visually on pinterest bulletin boards
ABOUT SITE | SITEMAPS | SEARCH | FEEDBACK
Content by Kairos ~ @kairosoflife
Homepage | Portfolio | Contact
Original content © 2021 Copyright, Kairos
