The Word Museum
The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten
INTRODUCTION
The English language, as the largest and most dynamic collection of words and phrases ever assembled, continues to expand, absorbing hundreds of words annually into its official and unofficial rolls, but not without a simultaneous yet imperceptible sacrifice of terms along the way. Fortunately, before their quiet disappearance, many of these reflections of antiquity, the "remnants of history which casually escaped the shipwreck of time," to use a phrase of Francis Bacon, were recorded in a variety of published and unpublished writings, including dictionaries and glossaries.
I still remember my first browse through one of these nineteenth-century lexicons, in which I failed to find a noteworthy entry for some time. Coupled with my initial enchantment was a bit of discouragement brought on by the sheer volume of words that had changed surprisingly little over a century and a half. But a few years later, I found renewed inspiration in Joseph Shipley's Dictionary of Early English, a work densely packed with intriguing vignette ... read full excerpt from The WORD MUSEUM: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten ebook
