The English language is changing everyday. We always talk about the new words that are being used, and the slang that is being introduced into our modern day dialect. The words we lost are never really acknowedged, and they deserve to be. I will obviously not be able to get to all of them, but here are a few that may tickle your fancy. We all know the word satisfaction and it is still in common use today, but you have probably never heard of satisdiction. Satisdiction is the act of saying enough. It occurrs when you are satisfied with what you said. In latin satis means "enough", and diction means "expression"; using the Latin roots you can see how satisdiction came to mean what it do
es. Nathaniel Ward said, "They desire not satisfaction, but satisdiction, whereof themselves must be judges." Another lost word is abecedarian, which is a name for one who teaches about the alphabet or pertaining to the alphabet. The word derives from latin, but is also made up from the first four letters of the alphabet respectively (ABeCeDarian). Now instead of saying abecedarians, we say Elementary School or lower level teachers. When you want to call someone stupid, you call them stupid, but years ago a simpleton or a fool would be called a ninnyhammer (Justin, I know you will enjoy calling people ninnyhammers if the opportunity arises!) There isn't much etimlogy of why this word came about, but in my opinion it sounds like something a Brit' would say. There are a lot of fun words that are no longer found in general English dialect, but should still be recognized. To take a look at more words like the ones above click here. Obscure words are cool, so don't forget about them!
es. Nathaniel Ward said, "They desire not satisfaction, but satisdiction, whereof themselves must be judges." Another lost word is abecedarian, which is a name for one who teaches about the alphabet or pertaining to the alphabet. The word derives from latin, but is also made up from the first four letters of the alphabet respectively (ABeCeDarian). Now instead of saying abecedarians, we say Elementary School or lower level teachers. When you want to call someone stupid, you call them stupid, but years ago a simpleton or a fool would be called a ninnyhammer (Justin, I know you will enjoy calling people ninnyhammers if the opportunity arises!) There isn't much etimlogy of why this word came about, but in my opinion it sounds like something a Brit' would say. There are a lot of fun words that are no longer found in general English dialect, but should still be recognized. To take a look at more words like the ones above click here. Obscure words are cool, so don't forget about them!
I believe last year, $Brian Tang$ wrote about the death of languages. If I remember correctly, he was primarily talking about languages that only had a few speakers, but the kind of language death you talk about is also interesting. These obscure words could potentially become slang-like if a group of people were to use them with each other. These would be(are?) better than slang words because I could use them in a graded essay because they are in a dictionary. An unabridged dictionary.
ReplyDeleteYou're right. Ninnyhammer is a good word.(Apparently my computer doesn't know it's a word at all. It's trying to hyphenate it. Can a computer program be a ninnyhammer?)
I found your post very interesting, and it is a funny coincidence that I also wrote about unusual words. This topic is engrossing; words are the building blocks of our language, and you can build the same thing in so many ways. Using these old, obscure words, I would be able to say many of the same things I do today, but sound a little more interesting while doing it.
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