A LIST OF
LOST ENGLISH
WORDS
G'day folks,
A team of linguists at the University of York
has excavated 30 “lost” words from the English language. These words, they say,
have fallen out of use but could be plenty useful again in the world of today.
They found them by looking through old books and dictionaries, the BBC reports.
According to
the York Press, the
words include:
- Snout-fair: Having a fair countenance; fair-faced, comely, handsome
- Betrump: To deceive, cheat; to elude, slip from
·
Coney-catch: To
swindle, cheat; to trick, dupe, deceive
·
Slug-a-bed: One who
lies long in bed through laziness
·
Momist: A
person who habitually finds fault; a harsh critic
·
Peacockize: To
behave like a peacock; esp. to pose or strut ostentatiously
·
Sillytonian: A silly
or gullible person, esp. one considered as belonging to a notional sect of such
people
·
Merry-go-sorry: A
mixture of joy and sorrow
·
Teen: To vex,
irritate, annoy, anger, enrage / To inflict suffering upon; to afflict, harass;
to injure, harm
·
Wasteheart: Used to
express grief, pity, regret, disappointment, or concern: “alas!” “woe is me!”
Also wasteheart-a-day, wasteheart of me
·
Dowsabel: Applied
generically to a sweetheart, “lady-love”
·
Ear-rent: The
figurative cost to a person of listening to trivial or incessant talk
So perhaps you are feeling like a slug-a-bed
this morning. Now you can complain about paying ear-rent to your dowsabel, who,
to be honest, has a tendency to peacockize.
This
project was sponsored by an insurance company that is now running some sort of
contest where people can vote on which of these words should be re-embraced by
English speakers. Wasteheart! Does that make you feel betrumped or
coney-catched, like a sillytonian? Does it bring a bit of merry-go-sorry to
your day?
Clancy's comment: Mm ... Doubt if I will include any in my latest book.
I'm ...
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