Words & WritingGreek → English
Archaism
/ˈɑːrkiˌɪzəm/noun
A word, form or style kept in use after it has otherwise passed out of the language.
The Greek roots
ἀρχαῖος
arkhaîos
ancient, from the beginning
-ισμός
-ismós
practice, habit
Literally: “the practice of the old”
The story of the word
ἀρχαῖος comes from ἀρχή, a beginning, so an archaism is a thing still shaped by the start. Greek critics already had the word: ἀρχαϊσμός named the deliberate imitation of old Attic that Atticist writers of the Roman period practised, and they argued about how much of it was too much. English uses it two ways, one neutral and one sniffy, depending on whether the old form is thought earned or affected.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
archaicarchaeologyarchivemonarchy
In a sentence
Thou and thee survive in hymns as archaisms nobody notices any more.
The translation is full of archaisms that make Homer sound like Tennyson.