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?
[QUOTE=Kilvert’s Pagan]
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…
[/QUOTE]
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.”
[QUOTE=The Sonoran Lizard King]
More quolloquial than archaic, but I’ve used the phrase “If I had my druthers, I’d..”
I’m sure it’s a bastraction of ‘I would rather’.
[/QUOTE]
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.
[QUOTE=Colophon]
Fortnight is absolutely standard in the UK. I find it a little odd that such a useful word has died out in the USA.
[/QUOTE]
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?
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Aye.
[/QUOTE]
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. 