Fossil Words

placebohuman:

Interesting linguistics and language tidbit: fossil words are words that are mostly obsolete, except for their use in a specific phrase or idiom. Examples from English include:

ado: as in without further ado (and also the title of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing), meaning “trouble or fuss”.

bandy: as in bandy about, meaning “to give and receive reciprocally” or “to pass around casually” it could also mean “to fight with or against someone” (’the prince expressly hath forbidden bandying in the Verona streets’, Shakespeare).

bated: as in with bated breath not to be confused with its homophone baited. Bated means “reduced or lowered.” It comes from abate which is still used in law.

beck: as in at one’s beck and call, a beck is a nod of the head or motion of the hand used as a call or command. It has the same root as beckon (as in ‘he beckoned her from across the room’).

eke: as in eke out a living, meaning “to increase or augment”. There’s a remnant of this word in nickname which came from the compound ekename, which literally means “additional name”.

fettle: as in in fine fettle, meaning either a physical state or a mental state. This is similar to another fossil word, kilter, as in out of kilter, where kilter means “good condition”.

fro: as in to and fro, coming from the Scottish pronunciation of the word. Another more obsolete form of the idiom is ‘fro and till’ if you wanna show off to your friends or something.

kith: as in kith and kin. Kith referred to friends and acquaintances. Kin referred to family and relatives. An archaic version of this was kith and kine meaning “relatives and property”, or literally, “friends and cattle”. So, if you like your cows but not your family, maybe use the older version!

shebang: as in the whole shebang. This originally meant “temporary shelter”. It somehow came to mean “any matter of present concern”. May also be seen spelled chebang.

shod: as in roughshod. Shod means “wearing shoes” though I think it may now mean “having tires”. This has nothing to do with the word shoddy which is instead from shoad meaning “loose stone and rubble” (maybe?).

wend: as in wend your way, meaning “to pursue or proceed”. The modern past tense of wend is wended, but originally its past tense was went. That’s right. Went. Similar to send/sent, lend/lent, spend/spent, we had wend/went. For some reason it was decided to use went as the past tense of the word go instead (the original past tense of go was yede, so really I don’t blame them).

wreak: as in wreak havoc, meaning “to inflict or cause something, especially harm, or to take vengeance” (’on me let Death wreak all his rage’, Milton). Its often mistakenly written as “wreck havoc”. Might not be around much longer!

yore: as in times of yore. The word yore means “time long past” and comes from the same root as the word year.