I’m very tempted to let bygones be bygones, but the fascinating topic I’m discussing today has made me run amok!
Some of the most intriguing words in the English language are what linguists call ‘fossil words,’ so named because they are artifacts from another era and survive only in isolated usage. Broadly obsolete, these words remain in current use due to their presence within an idiom.
Many of these words were once common in daily use. The lo in “lo and behold” was a commonly translated word in The Bible. But like anything, trends (including language and slang) fall by the wayside and fade into disuse.
Sometimes without explanation, these words become part of a ‘phrase’. The definition of the word itself would stump most, but they are immediately understood when used in these phrases.
Some of these words we use in idioms fairly often, such as:
- inclement, as in “inclement weather”
- batten, as in “batten down the hatches”
- shebang, as in “the whole shebang”
- fro, as in “to and fro”
- beck, as in “at one’s beck and call”
- riddance, as in “good riddance“
- spick, as in “spick and span“
- eke, as in “eke out”
And of course, the words I used earlier (ado, bygones, and amok) also fall into the fossil word categorization!
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