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Kempt 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”
by cortesoft 5y ago
Kempt 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.