ARCHAISMS

Archaisms are words which are no longer used in everyday speech, which have been ousted by their synonyms. Archaisms remain in the language, but they are used as stylistic devices to express solemnity.

Most of these words are lexical archaisms and they are stylistic synonyms of words which ousted them from the neutral style. Some of them are: steed /horse/, slay /kill/, behold /see/, perchance /perhaps/, woe /sorrow/ etc.

Sometimes a lexical archaism begins a new life, getting a new meaning, then the old meaning becomes a semantic archaism, e.g. «fair» in the meaning «beautiful» is a semantic archaism, but in the meaning «blond» it belongs to the neutral style.

Sometimes the root of the word remains and the affix is changed, then the old affix is considered to be a morphemic archaism, e.g. «beautious» /»ous» was substituted by «ful»/, «bepaint» / «be» was dropped/, «darksome» /»some» was dropped/, «oft» / «en» was added/. etc.

Либо это, здесь по историзмы так же.

/Archaisms are words which are no longer used in everyday speech, which have been ousted by their synonyms. Archaisms remain in the language, but they are used as stylistic devices to express solemnity.

Most of these words are lexical archaisms and they are stylistic synonyms of words which ousted them from the neutral style: steed (horse), slay (kill), perchance (perhaps), betwixt (between). These lexical archaisms belong to the

poetic style.

Where the causes of the word‘s disappearance are extra-linguistic, e.g. when the thing is no longer used, its name becomes a historism. Historisms are very numerous as names for social relations, institutions, objects of material culture of the past. here belong such transport means as brougham, berlin, fly, gig; also such vehicles as prairie schooner, also such boats as caravel, galleon, and such weapons as breastplate, crossbow, arrow, vizor.

Old Words are sometimes called Obsolete or Archaic. Language grows and develops, and as such, language adopts new or revised words and discards old, useless ones.

The word "tale" was formerly used, in one sense, to indicate account or calculation, but it is now obsolete in this use. The words eke, irk, quoth, trice, twain, wot, yclept were once in perfectly good use; of course, today these words are obsolete, except in prose and poetry in which the literary writer aims to retain the tone and spirit of former times.

Certain past tense forms, such as brake for broke, spake for spoke, clomb for climbed, have gone out of use, as well as the past participle forms, gotten and proven for got and proved respectively.

Archaism is dead language -- it has little place in the live, pulsating expression of oral and written communication. Occasionally, however, the language of advertising is permitted to indulge archaic forms, provided they are in harmony with the subject. Ye olde armchair in which grandfather sate is a play on words which appears in an advertisement of antique furniture.

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