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Lexical archaisms are single archaic words or expressions used regularly in an affair (e.g. religion or law) or freely; literary archaism is the survival of archaic language in a traditional literary text such as a nursery rhyme or the deliberate use of a style characteristic of an earlier age—for example, in his 1960 novel The Sot-Weed ...
This category pulls together articles that relate to various words on Wikipedia that are associated with archaic English words and phrases. Wiktionary has a category on English archaic terms . Subcategories
Archaic English words and phrases (1 C, 20 P) L. Latin words and phrases (22 C, 379 P) P. Pali words and phrases (36 P) S. Sanskrit words and phrases (5 C, 319 P)
Also apophthegm. A terse, pithy saying, akin to a proverb, maxim, or aphorism. aposiopesis A rhetorical device in which speech is broken off abruptly and the sentence is left unfinished. apostrophe A figure of speech in which a speaker breaks off from addressing the audience (e.g., in a play) and directs speech to a third party such as an opposing litigant or some other individual, sometimes ...
Generally, words coming from French often retain a higher register than words of Old English origin, and they are considered by some to be more posh, elaborate, sophisticated, or pretentious. However, there are exceptions: weep, groom and stone (from Old English) occupy a slightly higher register than cry, brush and rock (from French).
Example: Certain writers in the modern day and age use archaic terms such as "thy", "thee", and "wherefore" to imbue a Shakespearean mood to their work. Forms of diction include: archaic diction (diction that is antique, that is rarely used), high diction (lofty sounding language), and low diction (everyday language).
It is now largely archaic, having been replaced in most contexts by the word you, although it remains in use in parts of Northern England and in Scots (/ðu:/). Thou is the nominative form; the oblique / objective form is thee (functioning as both accusative and dative ); the possessive is thy (adjective) or thine (as an adjective before a ...
In languages like French, elision removes the end syllable of a word that ends with a vowel sound when the next begins with a vowel sound, in order to avoid hiatus, or retain a consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel rhythm. [2] These poetic contractions originate from archaic English. By the end of the 18th century, contractions were generally looked ...