I get my shoes repaired but once only.
As a mathematician, I use hence regularly and whence occasionally (but not thence). When my kid brother was in college I once helped him write (= wrote) a composition and used hence. The teacher red-pencilled it as archaic. I was crushed. This was in the late 60s.
I’ve been known to say thrice, hither, and thither. I would like to see yonder used as an adverb it was originally, instead of the noun it is usually perceived to be.
Yes, verily I agree about verily.
Gadzooks!
mmm
I’ve been a proud written proponent of prolly for as long as I can remember and have no intention of stopping; someday it will either be a trademark of mine or it will be widely used.
I would be pleased to find that groovy was making a comeback.
Whereupon. Not exactly archaic but awkward in modern everyday parlance.
Trumpery - attractive articles of little value.
Zounds, I want to use ept. We have inept, why not ept?
Because it doesn’t belong in a song.
Aw, man, I was sure this was going to be a Commodores spoof.
I thought “prolly” was a relatively new word (like, last 10 years – I see it every so often.) Or are you saying it’s had its peak as slang and has been on the decline?
As for “groovy,” my impression is that it’s been on an upswing since the 2000s or so. I remember it as really old-fashioned slang in the 80s and 90s, and then at some point, my peers started sporadically using it again. I would not at all feel weird “That’s pretty groovy,” and I’m pretty sure I end up using the word a couple times a month.
It’s at least displayed an upswing in the written corpus on ngram viewer, but with the upswing about a decade earlier.
My impression is that “hence” meaning “therefore” is perfectly normal and not archaic, but not so much “hence” meaning “in the future” as in “five years hence.” That and “whence” both sound old-fashioned to me and I rarely hear them, except for effect or to draw attention to the words. Only my more literary-bent friends and family would use those words.
It’s a useless word, but I’ve always been fond of “widdershins” for “counterclockwise”/“anticlockwise”, although looking into it more, it looks more like a dialectal usage more than an archaic one.
Hence, thence, and whence, along with their counterparts, hither, thither, and whither, are also simple variations of here, there, and where that imply motion. The -ence forms imply motion away from, whilst the -ither forms imply motion toward. Thus, “Come hither!” and “Depart hence!”
This word needs to make its way into American English.
Just because it’s much more fun to say than “counterclockwise.”
Pulchritude!
The pulchritudinous bride took the groom’s breath away.
Oh, sure, I know what they mean and how they’re related. And you’ll hear the idiomatic form “from whence” every so often, too. (Not sure if I’ve ever heard “to whither” or not.) It’s just that all those versions are considered a bit old-fashioned and formal, if not archaic. The “therefore” meaning of “hence” does not seem to be archaic to me.
Here http://phrontistery.info/clw1.html are some candidates for revival.
I think epeolatry should be revived, since it is definitely an apt descriptor for some people.
From that site:
brephophagist: one who eats babies (I now want a T-Shirt with this on it)
cacatory: accompanied by loose bowels
fallaciloquence: deceitful speech
Also, is garrulous still in use these days? How about blatherskite?
Prolly dates back to at least the early 1920s in print. Here it is used by Hugh Wiley in his 1922 novel Lily, for example. I don’t know that the word has yet had a “peak” in usage, but I am to give it one (by bringing it into the mainstream).
Glad to hear that you hear people using groovy.
I also call people “brother” and “sister” frequently. It began at work (I am a proud union member) but has since carried over into regular usage if the situation is more familiar or egalitarian, where the respect inherent in “sir” or “ma’am” isn’t required or helpful.
“Resurrected” should be resurrected and “ressurrected” put to death.
You can get a "WTS" (What the Swive?) T-Shirt from Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog.
My personal favorite archaism is “clamber”, which means “to climb”. My father was fond of telling us to “clamber on in” to the car. I use it myself from time to time.
IMHO Pulchritude is the ugliest sounding word for “beauty” there is.