Talk:Fossil word

Tenter

Tenterhooks. "The word tenter is still used today to refer to production line machinery employed to stretch polyester films and similar fabrics." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mcgyver5 (talk • contribs) 01:45, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Hither

The number of examples for hither starts to suggest that it isn't a fossil! *<:@)

Many-splendored

Would "many-splendored" (or even just "splendored") go on this list? It also seems to be only ever used within, or in reference to the phrase "love is a many-splendored thing". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:F40:962:2925:9D55:CF47:3A17:1B07 (talk) 04:10, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Merge with Cranberry morpheme

I oppose the merge with the "Fossil word" article, since cran morphs are prosodically and morphologically bound forms, which do not occur as separate words -- which is not the case with fossil words... AnonMoos 19:46, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

I would also strongly oppose a merge with cranberry morpheme - fossil are seperate words used in phrases whereas cranberry morphemes are... morphemes! (Though if you also suggest that the articles on morpheme and word should be merged then I might agree with you!! *<:@)

dint, bended

Would "by dint of" go in this list? How about "on bended knee"? (Plse add if yes.)71.236.26.74 (talk) 08:30, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Amok?

I don't think that should go here AFAIK it's from Asia (Webster says Malaysia). Otherwise we'd have to put in all foreign words that are only used in certain expressions. (e.g. Gesundheit for sneezing). The definition says it's supposed to be an "old" word, not a foreign one. 71.236.26.74 (talk) 21:23, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Well virtually all English words were foreign once. Amok is in many English dictionaries and has been used in the English language for hundreds of years, so it both old and English. (The Malay word is spelled amoq.)--Shantavira|^{feed me} 14:47, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Adding wiktionary links?

Should we link the example idioms to their corresponding wiktionary articles? I've never heard some of the idioms on this page, so I had to look them up to figure out their meaning. I mean, how is one supposed to infer the meaning of "coign of vantage" if one is not familiar with the idiom already?

If no one objects, I'll add the links. Baeksu (talk) 07:53, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Added links, except for the couple that are not in wiktionary. I removed one external link for 'sticks in one's craw' ([1]), which had the definition only. Other links discuss etymology as well, so I left them, as they might be useful to the reader.

Baeksu (talk) 02:00, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Absolutist Language

Either the absolutist language needs to be toned down or some of these words should be removed. Ulterior, ilk, eke, ken… these words ARE used outside of these phrases, just not frequently. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.166.249.154 (talk) 14:24, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, even you.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 14:49, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Removals

I removed a lot of things. They fell into two varieties:

The first: words which are not strictly limited to their phrase. These are ilk, fell, and craw. I'd say ilk is only mildly uncommon and the phrase given is not more usual than other constructions ("his ilk", etc.), while craw is readily understood for birds. Fell as in "terrible, fearsome" gets currency in modern writing trying to sound old; even if that's the only way it's current, the meaning is understood outside the phrase, though it remains rare.

I also removed umbrage. "Taking umbrage" may be an idiomatic expression, but we also "take offence" and you can't use another verb with that; that doesn't make "offence" a fossil word, it's just particular about the verb used with it.

Tell me if you think otherwise. --10:30, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Someone added "craw" back without explanation in 2012. I am going to remove it again. It's definitely in common usage, e.g. in bird hunting.NoJoy (talk) 17:12, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Fettle

Is not a fossil.

>>> fettle |ˈfetl|

noun condition: the aircraft remains in fine fettle . verb [ with obj. ] trim or clean the rough edges of (a metal casting or a piece of pottery) before firing. • N. Englishmake or repair (something): the familiar sounds of bikes being prepped and fettled.<<< It also means to remove by filing any sharp edges of metal on a tool held in the hand,to reduce user fatigue, i.e. a block plane. Gimelgort 16:50, 11 June 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gimelgort (talk • contribs)

True - knocking the edge of paving slabs is also to fettle. However 'In fine fettle' uses fettle as a noun. Whereas these other examples are all verbs.

That argues for fettle (n) being a fossil word - but I'm no expert. J.A .Treloar 86.150.233.102 (talk) 20:53, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Not encyclopedic, just a definition & examples

I feel this stub is not encyclopedic, it's just a definition and many examples. Wouldn't wiktionary cover this adequately? Is there any way to really add to this article? Maybe linguistic research into how fossil words are born, how words lose meaning, and so on?--User:Dwarf Kirlston - talk 17:46, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Sources

We need better attestation on these; if the links to the words asserted them as fossil words, that would be OK, but the wiktionary entries say nothing about their fossil status. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 18:05, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

I should have read this page first! I have done a lot of editing, mainly deleting items which were not fossilized. The example of navy was absurd

We need a better definition. Should a word be at least be defined as obsolete in the OED before it counts as a fossil? BevRowe (talk) 10:56, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Second-person singular pronouns (and possibly other, analogous terms)

I'm not a linguist by training, and I'm not quite sure of the exact scope of the term "fossil word." Does it include words for which the fossilizing context is not an idiom or set phrase that can be used "directly" in a new sentence (in the sense that it parses as a general idiom or phrase, rather than as a quotation; there may be a better term to express this idea), but one or more specific passages of text or speech that are quoted sufficiently often to make the words in them "in current use," but only within the context of such quotations? I'm thinking here about the continued frequent recitation and quotation of Psalm 23 and the Lord's Prayer in translations (in particular, the King James Version) that use "thou," "thy," and "thine" (and the second person singular conjugations of a couple individual verbs, if one counts those as separate words). Anyone who _is_ a linguist (professionally or otherwise) know the answer to this?

If so, then I think those should be added; if not, then there's probably a "see also" that's appropriate. 35.11.156.189 (talk) 23:30, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Not sure about Psalm 23, since the "thou" forms don't appear until the fourth verse. The Lord's Prayer only has "thy" (the verb form "art", without an explicit subject in its own clause, and without an "-st" ending, would not be understood as a 2nd person singular form by those without specialized knowledge of linguistics and/or Early Modern English). I do think there can be words fossilized in a specific quotation (for example, "score" in "Four score and seven" in the Gettysburg Address), but not so sure about the Bible -- in many cases, people either have read a lot of the KJV, in which case they wouldn't be confused by 2nd. singular forms, or they don't care about the KJV, in which case they might not even understand the 2nd. singular forms. AnonMoos (talk) 04:26, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

P.S. The plural form "scores" with an indefinite meaning is still used in current English, but the singular form "score" with the exact meaning twenty is now a fossil... AnonMoos (talk) 15:54, 18 March 2024 (UTC)