Recently I was taken to task for using the word "hogswallop" in reference to my own disappointing body of work produced as part of the daunting 30 poems in 30 days effort launched by Northampton poet laureate Leslea Newman. It was touted as further proof of my antiquated pomposity.
But regardless of my antiquated pomposity or my attenuated prosody, I think it only fair, in the most retrograde of fashions, to come to the defense of old words. Those bloated old syllables get called florid, get blamed for the musty smell in a dark corner of the library, then wham—they're as fashionable as a hoop skirt with a mayonnaise stain.
It's all part of the natural progression of language, of course, the one that makes a word like "awful" go from denoting "awe-inducing" to denoting "terrible." Lexicographers like the fine folks at Springfield's own Merriam-Webster observe these changes and reflect them—they are descriptivists, crafters of dictionaries that mirror current usage and don't comment on the perceived "correctness" of that usage. The other camp comprises "prescriptivists," preservers of language doomed in the end to be overwhelmed by the forces of misapprehension and prevalent misuse.
A dictionary can, of course, only have so many words. As Merriam-Webster Associate Editor Emily Brewster says, "Dictionary real estate has traditionally been a very limited commodity… so as the language continues to expand room has to be made for new words. Words like 'acai,' 'frenemy,' 'IM,' and 'reggaeton' come into the language and we have to find room for them on the pages of our dictionaries."
That necessarily leaves older words abandoned somewhere deep in the stacks (although, as Brewster also points out, online dictionaries may eventually address that). At some point, the cumulative number of abandoned words in English will eclipse (or probably has already eclipsed) the currently employed words. Once-viable oceans of English join the fossil record alongside the tongue of Chaucer with his "Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote."
This is unavoidable. What else can be done when calling someone a clotpoll has lost its sting? Launch that word at someone, and they'll hardly unsheath a bodkin with which to perforate a pantagruelist. And so it gets filed away. Yet, what a catastrophe that is.
Those who try to perform CPR on these little outcropping of logos, by gum, shouldn't be pilloried. All too often, said pillorying is a manifestation of a terrible current in American culture: anti-intellectualism. Knowing things—even words—just isn't cool, and gets you labelled a geek or an elitist. Granted, our fair Valley sees less of that than many other places, but it's a sad state of affairs when knowing less becomes an inviting option.
I'll admit it: I love old words. I love how many of them steam along, ungainly as a filigreed locomotive: "Quit your lollygagging" is far more enjoyable to say than its prosaic cousin, "Stop messing around." I'm still right miffed at Noah Webster for "reforming" spelling, turning the wonderfully obtuse "gaol" into mere "jail."
I'm not advocating for an impossible world in which diction demands never repeating oneself and everyone understands the literal meaning of being hoisted by one's own petard. But perhaps something else is in order: the preservation of all those words that have made the long voyage from some far corner of the globe in the distant past to being tossed around in America. Take current survivors "galore," for instance, straight from the Irish language (itself a survivor of many centuries), or "cummerbund," an emissary from the subcontinent. They're with us now, but will they always be? Will their voyage have been for nought? What if we need them again?
They exist still, at large in the old editions that line the walls at Merriam-Webster. Books have been penned to aid their staying power, books like Jeffrey Kacirk's The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten. Kacirk has helped us remember old but extremely useful words like "scurryfunge" ("a hasty tidying of the house between the time you see a neighbor and the time she knocks on the door"). New words are wonderful things, too, and their presence only proves the vitality of our omnivorous language, but perhaps Merriam-Webster ought to do what only they could: lend old words new life outside their cloistering walls with an actual "word museum." Anything to help eradicate the uncoolness of resurrecting these strange syllables.
And, one hopes, they could post signs for slow-moving patrons that say: "No lollygagging" without too much snickering.
