Antiquated English

Of course I can't recall where I read this, but I believe English has hundreds of thousands of words, perhaps a million. Let me see if I can find some sort of backup for that statement.

Well I'm sure it's well over a million.

Depending on who you listen to it's between 650,000 - 700,000 but scientific and technical terms easily add over a million more to that.

I know there are more than 100 000 terms for computers alone.

so what's antiquated?

ok Craven - how come you're still an enthusiast and i have to be an editor - i don't want to lose my enthusiasm!

I'm not an editor. ;-)

I have no title cause I have no position. he he

hmmmmphhhhh

i may have to resign myself to resigning in order to regain my enthusiasm

If you want no title just PM (cause I might not see this thread again) me and I'll change it back. ;-)

1. Too old to be fashionable, suitable, or useful; outmoded.
2. To make obsolete or old-fashioned.

You now what I mean....

There are more than a million, and tens of thousands of words have fallen into disuse. For example, the verb "hight," meaning to call (as in to name) or be called (as in to be named). An example such as "he hight him La Cote Mal Taylle" meaning "he called himself the Ill-Fitting Coat" from Le Morte D'Artur. That is not a direct quote, but just a construct to show the use of the verb.

Hight occupies about 12 or 14 pages in the O.E.D., but fell into disuse almost 500 years ago. Caxton published The Death of Arthur in 1485, and Mallory (the author) says that it is written by "an humble knight presoner [prisoner] in the ninth year of the reign of our Lord Edward IV" which would indicate that he completed it in 1472. Although Mallory has long been identified with a truly scurrilous Thomas Mallory of Westmoreland, the language of the book is that of the north of England. There is another candidate for the authorship, a Thomas Mallory of Yorkshire, who was a prisoner of the Duke of Armagnac after the end of the Hundred Years War. This would explain the language of the book, and account for the many citations such as "as the Frensh book saith," in that the good Duke had a famously large personal library, especially noted for its texts in the Arthurian cycle. And, Thomas Mallory of Yorkshire died while still a prisoner of the Duke, in about 1473. The verb hight was already falling into disuse, and was not very current in the language of East Anglia, which, thanks to Wycliffe and Chaucer, is the ancestor of the English we speak today.

It's been years since i last read The Death of Arthur, but i've done so probably about six or seven times now, since childhood (the full version runs to about 1000 pages), and it introduced me to middle English, long before i studied it at University.

Given by an humble, parlous knecht, this seventh day of Novembre, in the Year of our Lord Iesus Christi, MMII.

I must say that I have never had the plesure of reading it but considering the amount of times you have read it I suppose it's a briliant read. I think I might just look for it ..

Try to find an unabridged copy, in the original English, with a gloss. It won't take long for you to pick up the vocabulary, and it's about as exciting a tale as you can find--intrigue, murder, incest, rape, balck magic, miraculous escapes, divine boredom (how did that creep in ? ! ? ! ?)--it's got all the ingredients of a great mini-series. Unfortunately, the movies always treat the Arthurian cycle as an opportunity to showcase some currently popular actor--not much different than Robin Hood: King of Overexposed Bad Actors with old what'shisface in it . . .

heeheeheehee

okbye

now, see, i'm thinking every word still has a use - maybe just for scrabble or annoying people who've never seen it - but that counts! :wink:

from my perspective no word can be antiquated if we use the definition of no longer useful - they may be out of style/outmoded, but i can still tick someone off using the words - so they're useful!

'Toucè,

That's not were I was going

You'll get used to our perverse ways, Douglas.



do you still use the word knecht in Afrikaans? My dad still uses it when speaking German. He would probably refer to Craven as a knecht.

"Am Ende sucht der Knecht nach Amseln"

http://www.labournet.de/diskussion/gewerkschaft/knecht2.html

I thought it was servant, Douglas says it's "slave or peon". I say Bethie's polls have an uncertain future. ;-)