It wasn’t archaic, it was vintage! Sheesh…
Apt. Inept isn’t in+ept, but in+apt.
Slapsauce - meaning a glutton.
“Would you say you’re a foodie?” “Oh no, I’m just a slapsauce.”
But it does belong in a musical:
*Philia: That’s the brute who raped my country, Thrace!
Pseudolus: He raped Thrace?
Philia: And then he came and did it again! And then again!
Pseudolus: He raped Thrace thrice? *
What a wonderful site. Thanks for the link!
I’ve definitely seen it a lot online. Here’s a thread from over 10 years ago about it. I also just realized that I also came across it in Confederacy of Dunces.
Looking at Google’s ngram viewer for the word, it looks to be at its peak right now. There’s also a lot of hits on this message board with the word, going all the way back to the beginnings of the board in 1999. So it’s not really what I would call archaic or obscure. It’s part of at least Internet slang (and I’d guess pre-Internet online slang, too). Don’t know much about it being used verbally, though.
From one of the Dirty Harry movies, I picked up the word “swell.” It’s a great answer to standard small talk like, “how’s it goin’?” And it has a nice, Ozzie-and-Harriet type of archaic feel to it.
My current favorite is “pill.” I have a two and a half year old daughter and, for some reason – I have no idea where it came from – when she starts being difficult, I quip at her “Oh, stop being such a pill!” I don’t know if I’ve heard it recently or I’m just channeling the old folks in the neighborhood I grew up in, but I’ve been getting some mileage out of that word lately.
I like that one, and I’ll go you one further “jackanapes.” As in, someone familiar being churlish (another fine archaic word) in your presence.
“Heel” is another nice derogatory term for a hanger-on that doesn’t quite get it. 
Doxy, bawd, and jade are also fun terms for fun ladies.
Fizzgig
I wonder if that died as the e over thorn degraded to a Y and then became th. Ye could be “the” or the plural “you” Especially as “Ye” as mentioned above was /j/e or Ȝe before english gained the consonantal Y.
I do find it interesting that the older plural second person object “you” replaced “Ye” and þe “thee” for singular second person object.
Other funny thing, IIRC complaints about vulgar forms of latin often complained about people dropping the /h/ from works, and “it” use to be “hit” in old english.
And think about the confusion of hes (his) being confused for his (its), how many less issues due to the the its/it’s problem would be gone had we not lost the /h/ from the neuter versions.
Anyway thanks for pointing this out, I may have been reading “ye” as “the” when it may have been “you” while reading the non-modernized versions of the classics like Shakespeare (not that spelling and grammar had been locked down at that point anyway)
I also like peppering my conversations with “moxie” and “spunk.” Wait. That didn’t sound right.
persnickety
crotchety
Some etymology supposes the slang meaning derived from someone being difficult to take or hard to swallow, like a literal pill. Makes sense to me. I always thought that was a southernism, though. It was very common during my childhood and is not particularly rare to hear now.
Not archaic, but not in regular use in conversation: obstreperous. Boisterous, noisy, aggressive, defiant. Usually used about a child or an adult displaying childish behavior.
Which brings us to churlish. Rude in a mean-spirited and surly way.
All this talk of whence reminds me of Sir Walter Scott:
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.
My thoughts seem to take a definite tone today.
“Crotchety” is hardly obsolete/archaic. Googling for pages updated in the last 24 hours returns 566 hits. Lots of various forum posts. “Yclept”, OTOH, returns 36. Mostly odd pill sites and such presumably with weird SEO concepts.
Another current user of “moxie” here. But I’m aware of the quaintness of the term.
(Mad magazine: permanently ruining minds since 1952.)
Yeah, I found an earlier thread on the Dope about this, and it looks like a good portion of Dopers (about a quarter) still use the phrase, so perhaps it’s not as archaic and quaint as I thought. I certainly don’t here it round these parts much, though.
Basically anything Mr. Burns says on The Simpsons.
“Ahoy, hoy!”
I’m waiting for “23-skidoo” and “Oh, you kid” to come back. With raccoon coats for the Big Man on Campus.
^ Wanna borrow my skimmer?
I would like to resurrect the distinctions between “thou” (singular subjective), “thee” (singular objective), “ye” (plural subjective), and “you” (plural objective). I’d also like to resurrect the distinctions between no/nay and yes/yea.