Forgotten English

While chatting online with an American friend living in Japan (long time English teacher). We often talk about lost and forgotten English words. 10,000 news English words are added to the English word lexicon and 10,000 are lost each year I am told...or there abouts.

Needless to say, in my MCAT word study, I looked up very applicable forgotten words and they are quite good.

http://www.englishrules.com/2007/favorite-forgotten-words/

Favorite Forgotten Words

February 20, 2007

Last year my mother gave me a desk calendar that had an obsolete English word for each day. It was geeky-cool to be greeted with an example of “Forgotten English” each day at work.

Some of the words are just too fun not to be shared. Others are so useful that I think they should be re-adopted into the English language.

Here are my favorite forgotten words of 2006:

1. purfled: short-winded, especially in consequence of being too lusty (1808)
2. squizzle: to let squizzle, to fire a gun (1956)
3. chaddy: full of chads. The bread is chaddy [if] it has been made of meal not properly sifted to get out the husks, fragments of straw, or gritty particles of the mill-stone. (1830)
4. tooth-saw: a fine frame-saw for sawing off portions of the teeth; used by dentists. (1874-77)
5. lunting: walking and smoking a pipe (1824)
6. curglaff: the shock felt in bathing when one first plugnes into the cold water (1808)
7. scurryfunge: a hasty tidying of the house between the time you see a neighbor and the time she knocks on the door (1882)
8. flippercanorious: elegant (1934)
9. irrisory: addicted to laughing or sneezing (1897)
10. jirging: the noise too dry shoes make when walked with (1824)

My favorite is scurryfunge. What’s yours?

Note: All of the calendar pages © Jeffrey Kacirk. You can buy his book, Forgotten English, at amazon.com.

Here's the first ten lost words:

• Philargyrist - someone who loves money. eg; I didn't know you were such an addicted philargyrist that you would ignore your studies just to post videos on YouTube.

• Sparsile - of a star, not included in any constelletion. eg; The new model felt like a sparsile amongst all the others in Hollywood.

• Patration - completion or perfection of something. eg; What Liza didn't know was that her colleges had organized a surprise party to celebrate the patration of her novel.

• Venundate - to buy and sell. eg; Ebay is a great place to venundate all sorts of things - no wonder my neighbor cant find that nasty dog of hers.

• Pamphagous - eating or consuming everything. eg; Ms. Overweight was denied yet another proposal today. This was the result of her being such a pamphagous eater.

• Phlyarologist - one who talks rubbish. eg; He was a brilliant phlyarologist and hence he succeeded at the elections.

• Cecograph - writing device for the blind. eg; He invented a cecograph which funnily lit up when it was plugged in.

• Gnathonize - to flatter. eg; Mary is wise enough now to not understand another gnathonizing beauty products salesman.

• Radicarian - pertaining to the roots of words. eg; Maximus's vast radicarian knowledge of Latin came in useful during the final round of ' Are you smarter than a fifth grader?'

• Plebicolar - appealing to the common people. eg; These days directors want to make movies that are plebicolar in nature.

Lost words continued...

• Soloecal - provincially incorrect. eg; Most folks who work with a plough will never lose a toe, but Jim-Bob had managed to make nine separate soloecal errors.

• Temerate - to break a bond or promise. eg; Each year in January I'm all steamed up about my weight loss resolutions, and by the third week I'm contemplating to temerate my vow to self.

• Inveteratist - one who resists reform, one who holds to tradition. eg; Most inveteratist cultures in Asia do not approve of inter-caste marriages.

• Vanmost - foremost. eg; During a sudden fire outbreak, a mother's most vanmost interest is of saving her children. Even the most precious diamonds in her safe is forgotten.

• Ictuate - to reiterate eg; Steffy kept ictuating about how happy she was to be selected for the inter-collegiate dance competitions.

• Blateration - blabber, chatter. eg; I had to listen to my mother's blateration for like forever just because I came back late from the tuitions.

• Starrify - to decorate with stars. eg; My toddlers were so fascinated as they discovered their starrified bedroom ceiling that for a few moment they had forgotten all about their bedtime story.

• Hecatologue - code consisting of one hundred rules. eg; The boss gave us a hecatologue governing the usage of office resources.

• Antipelargy - reciprocal of mutual kindness; love and care of children for. eg; The prodigal son never gave his loving father any form of antiperlargy.

• Sacricolist - pious worshipper. eg; Liza was a sacricolist who fervently believed in the existence of a higher being, except for some parts of New Jersy.