In view of the appalling number of words dropping from the English language every year, the Duck has urged that we all adopt a word. Besides the sheer number of words lost, which the adopt-a-word activists rightfully stress, one can also notice the kind of words lost: the latest Oxford Junior Dictionary, for example, has dropped all manner of religious words like "nun" and "priest" on the argument that kids today don't need to know those kinds of words. The same tome has dropped hundreds of nature related words; it has an entry for "Blackberry", the electronic communications device, but has no entry for "blackberry", the delectable edible of the fields of my youth.
The crisis reminds me of a pastime I used to enjoy, namely refurbishing words. Long ago, words such as "wonderful" and "terrible" lost their power through overuse, so in my writing I would try to recover the original beauty of the word by a simple rearrangement: the mountains were full of wonder, and the dark storm a thing of terror.
Along a similar vein, I enjoyed finding English words that had actually fallen from use and using them again, confident that the reader would know from context and from the feel of the word itself the meaning of the unfamiliar--but somehow strangely familiar--word. In honor of the Duck's call to action, therefore, I would like to resurrect on this blog a custom that fell away, namely the daily Lost Beauty. It won't really be daily, of course, but as often as I can get to it.
Today's lost beauty:
Toitish: "Ill-tempered, snappy." The old exclamation hoity-toity! expressed surprised at seeing someone in such a fit of temper.
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