I still use “fortnight” and “fortnightly”, at least partially because so many of the locals don’t seem to know the difference between bi-weekly/-monthly/-ennially and **semi-**weekly/-monthly/-annually…
I’ve heard it in the UK but not in the US in the last few decades…
I’ve used “mightn’t” once or twice.
Do “ye gods” or “Egads” count?
Fortnight is absolutely standard in the UK. I find it a little odd that such a useful word has died out in the USA.
Hee! This is fun! Remembered a couple of others I use often:
Dassn’t ( I dares not)
Febrile (having a fever)
S’truth!
Sooth (for ‘truth’)
And I use Latin abbreviations, e.g. in my email at work. People just shake their heads and back away …
My husband has been saying “Hark at the bairn!” when the 2.5-year-old says something particularly precocious.
When asked when sometghing might get done, I like to reply, “In the fullness of time.”
It originated in the old Li’L Abner comic strip. I doubt that a more specific origin was ever given, but I’m pretty sure that it was derived from “I’d rather,” as you surmised.
Aye.
Since I read Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series I sometimes say “thankee-sai,” but I doubt that really counts.
Really? How exactly is a single word that just means “two weeks” useful generally (or at least more so than the phrase “two weeks”)? Can you give examples?
Does a word become archaic if it’s being used only currently by a given group? The reason I ask is that “aye” and “aye, aye” are both still in current use within the Navy (and so I hear, the Coast Guard.). I can quite readily accept that it’s not common currency outside those circles, but I’d not consider it archaic, no more than I’d consider “scuttlebutt,” or “head*” to be archaic.
*The bathroom, toilet or WC.
ETA: Leaper, I think you’ll have to admit that talking about speeds in furlongs per fortnight just offers something that you can’t get by talking about feet per two week period. 