12 Old Words that Survived by Getting Fossilized in Idioms

[dipsydoodle]

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."

onward dear reader.................


Read the full text here: http://mentalfloss.com/article/51150/12-old-words-survived-getting-fossilized-idioms#ixzz2bw56vdMH

[Sherman A1]

1. Interesting

I always love to use old and out of place words from time to time.

[Graybeard]

2. The English language is always fascinating.

A fun article. Thanks.

[Kablooie]

9. It's more frustrating than fascinating for my wife.

She's Japanese and often asks me to explain the nuances and relationships of idioms.
Often I can't and have to tell her just accept the meaning without understanding the relationship to other parts of English.

[dipsydoodle]

10. Quite often there are similar expressions with the same meaning in other languages.

Just a matter of figuring / identifying them out. In France for example the direct equivalent of when pigs fly is when hens have teeth. The absence of understanding that rendered the title of the Pink Floyd track Pigs on the Wing totally meaningless to the French

[Kablooie]

17. Here are some English idioms to ponder.

Why does "up to" mean doing something bad?

When is is appropriate to use "Gee, that's swell."

Why is a person wise when he's a "wise guy"?

Why is a cat wearing pajamas a good thing?

A lot of books on American idioms seem to list a large percentage of early 20th century and Hollywood gangster slang, even recently published books.
This can help if you watch a lot of old movies, I guess, but they often don't explain the phrase has fallen out of fashion or is used by only a limited section of society.

My wife's main question nowadays is "Do you still use this phrase?".
About 60% of the time the answer is no.

[dipsydoodle]

18. Second and third in the UK might prompt an odd response.

They're US expressions. Perhaps tell your wife too that in the UK u,s means useless.

Cat's pyjamas is same as bee's knees and cat's whiskers - highly desirable. All jazz age expressions.

I think "up to" is just abb of "up to mischief / no good - abb'd to reflect not necessarily no good.

[Kablooie]

19. My wife got into an argument with a Japanese friend over the meaning of "a couple"

If you say "Would you pick up a couple things for me at the store?"
My wife said it means two or more the same as "a few".
Her friend insisted it meant exactly two, no more.

Finally after arguing for awhile my wife found out her friend learned English in England while she learned it in the US.
In America, "a couple" can mean two or more.
In Britain it means two only.

I didn't realize this difference until she found this out.

[dipsydoodle]

20. I treat as couple as meaning two,

a few a bit more than that and several even more.

I guess that confirms the UK aspect.

btw I had huge fun out in Cuba with a bunch of Chinese students doing their 5 year Spanish course. They already spoke perfect English but became obsessed with pronouncing my name as we would - its Richard.

I know why they experience such difficulty. Its which associated with the way in which we learn to speak - watching our mothers mouths move as we listen.

[Igel]

22. You'd think I'm British.

I'm not.

Where I grew up--in MD--"a couple" meant 2, a "few" meant 3-5, "several" meant 5-8 or so. There was overlap.

My wife's from the American SW. A "couple" for her can be 3 or even 5, and the rest are pushed up. Sometimes she'll say "several" and I say, "You mean a dozen?"

[xchrom]

3. i wonder if 'getting jiggy wid it' will survive that way? nt

[dipsydoodle]

21. I had to look that up.

[zeemike]

4. English is always evolving.

I guess all languages do, but it seems that English does it more so.
Thanks for this interesting read...I enjoyed wending my way through it, and a K&R is your just desert...I hope you eke out a place on the greatest page.

[Tab]

5. I always thought it was "just desserts"

rather than "just deserts" (like a fair Sahara)

[dipsydoodle]

7. In the UK its "deserts"

Last edited Wed Aug 14, 2013, 09:19 AM - Edit history (1)

see :

Usage notes

Deserts here is the plural of desert, meaning "that which one deserves". "Desert" is now archaic and rarely used outside this phrase.
The spelling just desserts is non-standard. It is sometimes used as a pun in, for example, restaurant names.

Synonyms

payback, poetic justice, comeuppance

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/just_deserts

We use "dessert" for pudding, sweet, afters, whatever......

[malthaussen]

12. Ah, I have learned something today.

Always thought "desserts" as in "that which is deserved" was spelled the same way on both sides of the pond. Thanks, Dipsydoodle.

-- Mal

[spooky3]

13. In the US, the spelling is "deserts"

Because of its derivation from "deserve".

"Just desserts" is incorrect in the US just as in the UK.

[malthaussen]

14. Ah, and all along I thought *we* were wrong.

Turns out it was just me after all.

I think I deserve some dessert, now.

-- Mal

[spooky3]

15. Yum! I don't "deserve" any but I'll have some.

Here's a source you might like -- this professor maintains a long list of mistakes:

http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/desert.html

[Squinch]

6. Cool!

[annabanana]

8. neat stuff.... thanks. n/t

[A Little Weird]

11. Very cool

I love mental floss.

[cyberswede]

16. It's not on the list, but your OP made me think of "don" ...

as in "don we now our gay apparel" from Deck the Halls.

I was surprised to hear "don" in the current song "Radioactive" by Imagine Dragons (heard it watching YouTube with my 10 y.o. just last night).

[Igel]

23. The first is an example of "suppletion." Not an idiom.

Suppletion is when you take a form of one word and use it to stand for a second.

No "goed", so "went." We came up with "wended" as the past tense of "wend."

Russian has mechta 'dream'. The genitive plural ("dreams'&quot should be either "mecht", which Russians don't like trying to pronounce or "mechet" which, unfortunately, already has a meaning--"mosque." So they took the rather high-flying mechtanie 'dream' and use its genitive plural.

Deti 'children' has a folksy singular ditya, but most people use rebyonok, which has a regular plural rebyata, meaning something like "guys". ("Okay, guys, let's get busy.&quot

Even irregular verbs like "be" (am, is, are) were originally suppletive. And because of "ain't anxiety" we have "aren't I a good boy?" (which has as its answer "I are a good boy" or "I are not a good boy"--you'd think). Can say "he is, he is not, he's not, he isn't" but you're stuck with "I am, I am not, I'm not, ----".


#12 "shrive" still survives in Shrove-Tuesday, as well.

Another example of the same kind of preservation of one form of the word when most of the word's forms are loft is "rift" (reave, riven; bereave is formed from reave) and "wrought" (a nifty old participle for "work", "workt" with various sound changes applied). Both in "What hath God wrought?" and "wrought iron"--as opposed to cast iron.

I personally like words that are their own antonym. "Ravel" means "unravel."