Re: the new word challenge

On 20 Aug 2005 13:54:49 -0700, "wordnerd"
<aminorflatfive@xxxxxxxx> said:

> I was wondering if there's a good new word--or, better, an
> archaic and obsolete word that has sadly been misplaced in
> the trash-- that we could reintroduce successfully into
> the language.

> I think the sign of success would be getting a dictionary
> to provide a new entry for it. As far as I tell, the
> Oxford ones are the most quick-moving (or
> market-desperate...) when it comes to putting things in,
> requiring evidence from about 15 sources over five years.

> Does anyone have a suggestion for a word that deserves
> some deliberate effort to help it gain an entry in an
> intermediate-size dictionary? It would have to be
> something that stands a chance of succeeding. I think it
> would be fun to have a competition to see who can get
> their word accepted into the language, or at least to show
> a noticeable increase in its usage.

I have a book called _Lost Beauties of the English Language_
that you should find interesting if you haven't already seen
it. It's full of words that could be candidates for your
scheme.

The book is by Charles Mackay. It was originally published
in 1874. The edition I have was published in 1987 by
Bibliophile Books. The ISBN is 0-900123-40-09.

I should say, though, that when I redd* the book I came away
with the feeling that a lot of the words were not all that
beautiful, and not all the words were really lost.

But picking a word more or less at random, I've hit on
"felth". I don't find it in either the _New Shorter Oxford_
(_NSOED_) or _Merriam-Webster's Unabridged_ dictionary
(_MWUD_). And it's not even in the _Oxford English
Dictionary_. (That's something the Oxford University Press
lexisniffers** might find interesting.) He says it meant
"the power of feeling in the fingers", and gives the
examples "A blind man has greater felth than one who can
see" and "The tailor's finger would lose its felth but for
his thimble".

We have "stealth" from "steal" and "growth" from "grow".
Why not "felth" from "feel"?

One of his words that isn't really lost is the noun "stang",
meaning a pole or bar. Both _NSOED_ and _MWUD_ have it with
that meaning, although _MWUD_ says "dialect Britain" and
_NSOED_ says "Long obs. exc. Sc. & dial.". It seems a
principal use of it was in the phrase "riding the stang", a
punishment called in America "riding the rail".

I think I could use that book to come up with at least a few
hundred candidates for you.

* Note on the spelling "redd" (partly to annoy Cooper): I
sometimes use it informally for the past tense of "read"
when the spelling "read" would be even momentarily
ambiguous. See http://tinyurl.com/85bjv or
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.english.usage/msg/8ed2c771c1ca8497?dmode=source&hl=en

** Note on "lexisniffer": Introduced circa 1998 by Woody
Wordpecker. It refers to a person who sniffs his way
through published works trying to find words that haven't
yet appeared in the _OED_.

.

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