WORDS BECOMING OBSOLETE

Recently, courtesy of a puzzle Wonderword, I learned of some words slated to become obsolete or labeled archaic. I was shocked to find among the words listed those I knew well and still use. These include abate, ephemeral, facetious and even the less used, pallid.

Subsequent to this discovery, I came upon a quote from the Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively which speaks eloquently about why I mourn the dying off of words. She wrote in part, “We open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we do not even know. We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter, we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse, we carry a museum inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never heard.”

This sentiment is why I am such a fan of etymology. Every word has a history—not just where it was born, but how influences shaped its latest form and use, and even why and how it first appeared in English. Such an adventure! It is like time travel, coasting unknown waters and encountering unknown civilizations.

But, according to the word puzzle mentioned above, some of these voyages are being closed to ongoing traffic like abandoned rail lines that once led somewhere people wanted to travel and did so frequently. I mourn this loss.