We do not speak the same English that was spoken 400 years ago and new words are added to dictionaries every year. There are hundreds of words that have fallen out of use throughout history, but there are specific qualifications for a word to be “lost.”
According to Stephen Chrisomalis, a University of Toronto professor who pens the linguistics website, “The Phrontistery” or “thinking place,” a lost word must have a header entry in the Oxford English Dictionary, must have been used in modern English, and may not be found in its proper context on any readily accessible website.
Additionally, the word must be used in a standard English variety rather than a regional dialect or must not be a simple variation in spelling from another word. These words are found in extremely old and rare books and must be used by at least two authors before it qualifies as a legitimate lost word, Chrisomalis said.
Such words include “bajulate,” which means “to bear a heavy burden,” “pamphagus,” which means “to eat everything” or “all-consuming;” and “pudify,” which is “a cause for you to be ashamed.”
A “philargyrist” is someone who loves money, and “tussicate” is a lost word for coughing. There is even old bar slang found among the lost words, with a “homerkin” being an old measure of beer, and “stagma” referring to all distilled (or hard) liquor.
These words were used between 1613 and 1890 before they were completely lost from literature and never seen again.
While it is maybe not in someone’s best interest to sport a vocabulary of entirely lost words, it would definitely be good to know one or two to make your friends “kench” or laugh loudly from time to time.
