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Some of them -- like peccable - are probably truly dead. But others, at least to me, seem obvious when pointed out. If I ran into "scrutable" or "wieldly" in
by retrac 5y ago
Some of them -- like peccable - are probably truly dead. But others, at least to me, seem obvious when pointed out. If I ran into "scrutable" or "wieldly" in a sensible context, I'm not sure I would realize they were archaic. A personal favourite "tractable" is still current but already seems to be fading away. Far more things remain intractable.
I have sometimes written a word, and then stared at it, and been unable to say whether I had invented it on the spot as a (hopefully) obvious form using regular patterns, or if I had seen it before and dredged it up. And maybe there is overlap there. Recollection is recreation in memory, and the irregular patterns beckon sometimes.
We see this elsewhere, besides adjectives. English has not used the strong conjugations of Old English in a thousand years for new verbs, generally. We retain hundreds of semi-irregular verbs from that. Sing, sang, sung. Sink, sank, sunk, sunken. Think, thought. Drag, drug, druggen/drawn. Some of these may not be current in your dialect anymore. I say dragged.
What's fun is when new verbs are invented, or when old verbs morph into new forms. "To sneak" is an old verb which was regularized in Middle English along with the rest. Sneak, sneaked. For about ~500 years things could only have sneaked. Then in the late 19th century in America we start hearing "snuck" as the past tense. That's now standard in my dialect and is creeping back into UK English, even. It's irresistible sometimes. "Thunk" was once the past form of to "to think" in some dialects. It is gone from nearly all for centuries now. That doesn't stop me from saying it once in a while for some reason; it just seems natural.
- Wistar 5y ago"High torque, tractable power." Or similar is still seen in vehicle reviews and the like.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tshaddox 5y ago“Tractable” is quite common in computer science, often to refer to problems which can be solved in polynomial time, as in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobham%27s_thesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobham%27s_thesis
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- arthurcolle 5y agoYeah I was confused by this inclusion for sure
- perl4ever 5y agoThunk is quite common in some parts, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunk
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- cortesoft 5y agoKempt is also still used fairly regularly (even though my iPad seems to think it is not a real word)… usually used as ‘well kempt’, like a “well kempt yard”
- mc32 5y agoI’d like to see more of ruthful.
- handrous 5y agoIt's common for archaisms to survive in fixed phrases, idioms, and clichés.
- dmurray 5y agoI see this as "well kept", sometimes hyphenated. Google n-grams suggests "well kempt" drifted into popularity since 2000 or so, with insignificant use before that. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Well+kept%2C+well+kempt&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Well+kept%2C+w...
- perl4ever 5y agoI was wondering what kind of usage "well kempt" had before 2000, and one of the examples in Google books is William Safire writing about writing, where he mentions "wellkempt" in Ulysses and says that in the 16th century, "kempt" divided into "ill kempt" and "well kempt". It goes on to say that "a thousand years ago, couth meant 'known, familiar' and uncouth meant 'unknown, foreign, strange'...[c]outh faded out but was back-formed and born again".
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tcbasche 5y agoThere’s a fascinating idea in here about how software spellchecks will alter our language over time. A few software companies / spellcheck AI’s dictating what is right and what isn’t.
- paul_f 5y agoI use and see tractable all the time. However, the context is often "that's not tractable"
- randycupertino 5y ago> To sneak" is an old verb which was regularized in Middle English along with the rest. Sneak, sneaked. For about ~500 years things could only have sneaked. Then in the late 19th century in America we start hearing "snuck" as the past tense. That's now standard in my dialect and is creeping back into UK English, even. It's irresistible sometimes. Have you seen the Conan vs Jennifer Garner chestnut on this very debate: https://youtu.be/DTLU06IlPVo?t=190 https://youtu.be/DTLU06IlPVo?t=190
- saghm 5y ago> Drag, drug, druggen/drawn. Some of these may not be current in your dialect anymore. I say dragged. "Drawn" also only really feels right for the passive voice. For using "drawn" actively, the only thing that sounds remotely right is "I drew", but that sounds super strange compared to "I dragged", I'm not even sure I would have recognized the former as a usage of the verb "drag" before thinking about all this.
- shkkmo 5y ago> I'm not even sure I would have recognized the former as a usage of the verb "drag" before thinking about all this. Drawn/drew aren't uses of "drag" at all, but are uses of "draw" which can be a synonym for "pull" (among many other uses.)
- retrac 5y agoDraw is closely related to drag, and draft. Draft animals that draw are dragging, at last by the dictionary definitions, though it is a little archaic sounding. Draw is dragh. The written "gg" is sometimes reduced to "gh" in Middle English between two vowels of the same closeness. Similar to the "ch" sound of German. It sort of swallows it, or reduces it to a fricative. So draggan -> draghn -> drawn. But only in some dialects. A whole cluster of related words. Also in this series is drive, draft. For some reason, it's a tendency for f and gh next to a /t/ to swap out. They do sound pretty similar, I suppose. The British still spell draft as draught. Old English has: dragan -- ic drage, he drægþ (dragth), ic drog/droh, he drog/droh. Dragende, gedragen. Standard Modern English has: to drag -- I drag, he drags, I dragged, you dragged. Dragging, dragged. Variant there's also: to drag -- I drag, he drags, I drug, he drugs. Dragging, drug/drawn/druggen. gedragen -> draggen -> draghn -> drawn gedragen -> draggen -> dragged gedragen -> draggen gedragen -> draggen -> draghen -> draghéd -> draught -> draft All the same root, branching in different directions.
- dotcommand 5y ago> If I ran into "scrutable" or "wieldly" in a sensible context, I'm not sure I would realize they were archaic. Archaic or not, I think most of us would find it "out of place" or awkward. When's the last time you used scrutable or wieldy in conversation? We probably could figure out the meaning but I bet most of us would find it odd. Though if more people started using it, we'd quickly get used to it.