English
has changed a lot in the last several hundred years, and there are many
words once used that we would no longer recognize today. For whatever
reason, we started pronouncing them differently, or stopped using them
entirely, and they became obsolete. There are some old words, however,
that are nearly obsolete, but we still recognize because they were lucky
enough to get stuck in set phrases that have lasted across the
centuries. Here are 12 lucky words that survived by getting fossilized
in idioms.
1. wend
You rarely see a "wend" without a "way." You can wend your way
through a crowd or down a hill, but no one wends to bed or to school.
However, there was a time when English speakers would wend to all kinds
of places. "Wend" was just another word for "go" in Old English. The
past tense of "wend" was "went" and the past tense of "go" was "gaed."
People used both until the 15th century, when "go" became the preferred
verb, except in the past tense where "went" hung on, leaving us with an
outrageously irregular verb.
2. deserts
The "desert" from the phrase "just deserts" is not the dry and sandy
kind, nor the sweet post-dinner kind. It comes from an Old French word
for "deserve," and it was used in English from the 13th century to mean
"that which is deserved." When you get your just deserts, you get your
due. In some cases, that may mean you also get dessert, a word that
comes from a later French borrowing.
3. eke
If we see "eke" at all these days, it's when we "eke out" a living,
but it comes from an old verb meaning to add, supplement, or grow. It's
the same word that gave us "eke-name" for "additional name," which
later, through misanalysis of "an eke-name" became "nickname."
4. sleight
"Sleight of hand" is one tricky phrase. "Sleight" is often miswritten
as "slight" and for good reason. Not only does the expression convey an
image of light, nimble fingers, which fits well with the smallness
implied by "slight," but an alternate expression for the concept is
"legerdemain," from the French léger de main," literally,
"light of hand." "Sleight" comes from a different source, a Middle
English word meaning "cunning" or "trickery." It's a wily little word
that lives up to its name.
5. dint
"Dint" comes from the oldest of Old English where it originally
referred to a blow struck with a sword or other weapon. It came to stand
for the whole idea of subduing by force, and is now fossilized in our
expression "by dint of X" where X can stand for your charisma, hard
work, smarts, or anything you can use to accomplish something else.
6. roughshod
Nowadays we see this word in the expression "to run/ride roughshod"
over somebody or something, meaning to tyrannize or treat harshly. It
came about as a way to describe the 17th century version of snow tires. A
"rough-shod" horse had its shoes attached with protruding nail heads in
order to get a better grip on slippery roads. It was great for keeping
the horse on its feet, but not so great for anyone the horse might step
on.
7. fro
The "fro" in "to and fro" is a fossilized remnant of a Northern
English or Scottish way of pronouncing "from." It was also part of other
expressions that didn't stick around, like "fro and till," "to do fro"
(to remove), and "of or fro" (for or against).
8. hue
The "hue" of "hue and cry," the expression for the noisy clamor of a
crowd, is not the same "hue" as the term we use for color. The color one
comes from the Old English word híew, for "appearance." This hue comes from the Old French hu or heu, which was basically an onomatopoeia, like "hoot."
9. kith
The "kith" part of "kith and kin" came from an Old English word
referring to knowledge or acquaintance. It also stood for native land or
country, the place you were most familiar with. The expression "kith
and kin" originally meant your country and your family, but later came
to have the wider sense of friends and family.
10. lurch
When you leave someone "in the lurch," you leave them in a jam, in a
difficult position. But while getting left in the lurch may leave you
staggering around and feeling off-balance, the "lurch" in this
expression has a different origin than the staggery one. The
balance-related lurch comes from nautical vocabulary, while the lurch
you get left in comes from an old French backgammon-style game called lourche.
Lurch became a general term for the situation of beating your opponent
by a huge score. By extension it came to stand for the state of getting
the better of someone or cheating them.
11. umbrage
"Umbrage" comes from the Old French ombrage (shade, shadow),
and it was once used to talk about actual shade from the sun. It took
on various figurative meanings having to do with doubt and suspicion or
the giving and taking of offense. To give umbrage was to offend someone,
to "throw shade." However, these days when we see the term "umbrage" at
all, it is more likely to be because someone is taking, rather than
giving it.
12. shrift
We might not know what a shrift is anymore, but we know we don't want
to get a short one. "Shrift" was a word for a confession, something it
seems we might want to keep short, or a penance imposed by a priest,
something we would definitely want to keep short. But the phrase "short
shrift" came from the practice of allowing a little time for the
condemned to make a confession before being executed. So in that
context, shorter was not better.
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