Lost Words…

If you think about it, language is something that’s always in flux.

Certain words may have multiple meanings or, in some cases, may start off meaning one thing and eventually mean another.

Then there are words which may describe something which, in time, becomes irrelevant or forgotten or, perhaps, a word simply falls out of favor with another taking over. Some words simply have a short life-span and are soon discarded. Some can be slang terms that don’t last a very long time.

A good collection of these so-called “lost words” have been collected in this wonderful website:

The Phontistery

What’s most intriguing about this website is that not only are these “forgotten” words listed, they are also given dates in which they were used.

For example, there’s the term “krioboly” which is defined as:

Sacrifice of many rams; bath in blood of rams

This term, according to the website, was in use from 1850 to 1882 and, perhaps, at a time when concerns regarding paganism or deviant/immoral religions were more predominant than today.

Such a weird term for something that, today, probably wouldn’t even enter people’s minds!

Here’s a really weird one: Snobographers.

The term, which was used between 1848 and 1966 (It had over one hundred years of use!) is defined as:

One who describes or writes about snobs

I mean, that makes sense but using such a term today? The website offers examples of the use of term in a sentence:

The editors scrapped the society page because it was full of pretentious snobographers.

…huh…!

Well, now you know.