Words we don't use any more

[Jack]

Why don't we use words like "fortnight" anymore?  Or stuff like "four score" as in "Four score and seven years ago"?  Kind of nice words and phrases, they had some character to them.  I'm not talking about slang words like keen or boss, which often fall out of use.  But real, regular words that just seem to have been forgotten.

Got any other ones?

[Raffine]

'Consumption' sound far more classy and romantic than 'Tuberculosis'.

I like 'lollygag'.

[Jack]

Trollop is another one.  Sounds positively cute 

[Newt]

Speaking of trollops: one of the guys my son plays D&D with named his character "Strumpet".  I guess he is not too familiar with Shakespeare.

I have a friend online who likes to bring words back into common use: her current favourite is "whilst".

[Doggett]

Totty

[Raffine]

Do you guys in England still say 'Bumbershoot' for 'Umbrella'?

Thats so cuuute!

[Kester Pelagius]

Thy question descries the brickle nature of this civil wildness we refer to as our common culture.  Yet, methinks, with all honoured regard to ye, surely thou jesteth.  For this "dumbing down" of our culture has been fast progressing since the New Deal.  But, to point, and your quandry to examine, one might say whenas we are exhorted to speak the words we useth are those of a customary acceptance; meaning as of the common tongue.

But this thou already knowest.  Thou dost seek answer further, and justly so my friend.  Thus let us these bedlams away, which is to say, o saucy mortal, that we must be content to use speech of modern parlance rather than antique coinage.  The means, therefore, unto which our speech doth obtain comes thus from nathmore than terminology in current usage.  For, humbled though we may be by the fain beauty of imagerial words that have fallen into disuse they are perpetually replaced and succedded by nascent word-forms.

Yet, forsooth, one does lament that such as the Ovidians have become dross.  Alas youth today hath not a groatsworth of wit, for all that they have all the minutiae written by man available at their fingertips thanks to the Internet. Alas they are as mad Thyades.  So it is this sorry calamity hath come to pass, if not your inquiry an simple answer found.   

[Joe the Destroyer]

Zounds
Huzzah

That's really all I got right now.  Doh!

[schmendrik]

Nobody ever gets a good brain fever anymore.

I'd just as lief bring that one back.

(Actually, I've heard people say "just as lief" or "liefer". I think it's still kind of current in some places)

[Joe the Destroyer]

Then there's "tallywhacker."  It's one old guys always use at work.  "Well, it ain't like none of you nurses never seen a tallywhacker before."

[Doggett]

Fortnight and tallywacker still gets used all the time !



Yikes, guys.
Next you'll be saying the word "gonads" has gone. Which it hasn't because I heard it on the radio this morning.

[lester1/2jr]

yuo hear less of someone being fingered for a crime.  I can't imagine why though.  it's a perfectly good descriptive term

[WingedSerpent]

How about "please" and "thank you"

"I respectfully disagree" has been replaced by "What are you? A a@#$%^$$&%-bag?"

[Kester Pelagius]

How about "please" and "thank you"

"I respectfully disagree" has been replaced by "What are you? A a@#$%^$$&%-bag?"

Manners do see rather threadbare of late.  And when someone does use the basic amenities it's usually epigenous.

[Psycho Circus]

Fortnight gets used over here all the time.

Whatever happened to;

Kin
Hither
Forbode

And of course, who could forget Sussudio!