The English language has been around for long enough by now that words which once fell out of vogue have sometimes returned again in different forms. For instance, the word “defalk” once meant to lop something off with a sickle or pruning hook. It then linguistically morphed into the word “defalcate,” which sounds even worse, and is: it means to misuse or embezzle funds. In this era of shifting financial fortunes, the word “defalk” has a chance to make a comeback, as people line up outside their stockbrokers’ offices armed with sickles and pruning hooks.

Impress your friends and family with these five fine Words from the Past.

Phrenology: A branch of junk science popular in the nineteenth century. Its practitioners believed that personality traits took up physical space in a person’s brain, so by examining and patting the skull, phrenologists could determine which traits were dominant. As you can see by examining the helpful phrenological diagram, our heads have a lot of room for various personality traits: “Suavity” near the top of the head, “Mirthfulness” around the right temple and “Philoprogenitiveness,” or love of one’s children (a great antiquated word in itself) at the base of the skull.

Now we have a much more scientific method of determining personality: Facebook quizzes. You can find out what type of Twilight vampire you are, which Sex and the City character you are, or what kind of cheese you are. These quizzes don’t lie. It’s almost like the Internet is reaching out and massaging the top of your head.

Muliebrity: the state of womanhood, or the qualities of femininity. No, this term does not intend to compare women to mules, but rather to finely ground flour. (Some words are antiquated for a reason.) It comes from the Latin word mulier, or woman, which in turn comes from the word “muliesi” (fine, soft) as does the Russian word molot, to grind, and the English word meal, or flour.

The modern version of femininity can be anything that an individual woman defines it as, but a casual glance at Glamour magazine, one of femininity’s modern standard-bearers, insinuates that it has something to do with bronzing your jawline and cooking pasta rapidly.

Roborant: A tonic that restores vigor or strength. It can be a noun or an adjective (“I drank some particularly roborant Robitussin for my cold.”) It derives from the same Indo-European root, reudh, as the words “red, “ruddy” and “robust.” The modern equivalents, then, are energy drinks such as Red Bull. There is almost no ailment that an invigorating can of glucuronolactone, caffeine and carbonation won’t cure. (Disclaimer: You might want to run that by your doctor.)

Spraint: This refers to the droppings of an otter. These droppings, according to Wikipedia (I haven’t spent much time in otter country) can smell like anything from freshly mown hay to putrefied fish. The term joins others in the illustrious category of specific words for animal droppings: the fewmets of a deer, the buttons of a sheep, and the wormcast of guess what animal.

The modern equivalent is: spraint. Much like the otters that frolicked in the days when Latin was commonly spoken and Old English was the newest version, today’s sophisticated modern otter is up to pretty much the same tricks: swimming, eating and making spraint.

Nuncheon: In order to properly understand nuncheon, you must understand lunch. “Lunch,” to medieval English peasants working in the fields, was always a lump of some sort – a wad of bread, a hunk of cheese, a shred of meat – that they could keep in their pockets or sacks to tide them over between breakfast and their evening meal. All these lumps tended to stick in their throats, so they needed a beverage to wash them down. A slang term for any drink at that time, whether wine or water, was “shench.” Thus, the drink you consumed with your lump at noon was your noon-shench, which over time became the hybrid word “nuncheon.”

As the midday meal became adopted by the English upper classes, and began to take place at a proper table with multiple dishes, the word “lunch” still carried the stigma of the lump in a peasant’s cheek, so that up until the beginning of the nineteenth century the nobility would take “nuncheon” instead, which referred to what they ate as well as what they drank around noon. The gradual easing of class divides contributed to the word “luncheon” becoming more in vogue, which was eventually, conveniently shortened to its modern form: lunch. The next time you notice all the lumps in a plate of cafeteria mac-and-cheese, consider its dubious origins.

One of the great things about the English language is the way it is constantly evolving (for instance, the phrase “Schwing!” was all the rage in the early ‘90s, and hardly anyone says that anymore. Ask an older sibling – or Wikipedia – if you’re unsure of the definition.) Sometimes, however, terrific words get swept aside in favor of shiny new ones. In this series, we will look at words that have fallen into disrepair, and try to patch them up by showing their modern equivalent. Sometimes a word has been replaced by a compound word that is more specific to today’s world, and sometimes the exact same word has a completely different meaning than it carried in another era. Most often, though, there is no longer an exact term that brings the same succinctness and zing to what it is describing as these antiquated words do. In our effort to bring back words from the past, here’s Eduify’s first installment of 5 old words.

1) Goliard

This originally referred to a group of hard-drinking university students in the Middle Ages who would wander from town

to town, singing ribald songs and satirizing the Church for engaging in ridiculous practices, such as the Crusades. They would, for instance, each drag a herring behind them as they walked to Mass, and attempt to squash each other’s herrings without letting their own be stepped on, in order to mock what they saw as the absurd religious rituals of their era.

Even after the Goliards faded out as a protest movement, the term remained in general use, finding its way into the works of medieval authors such as Chaucer, where it refers to a wandering minstrel. The closest modern equivalent would probably be the mysterious monastic order known as the fraternity, whose adherents wander from college town to college town in search of tailgating during a football game, take part in arcane initiation rituals like making new members eat live goldfish, and would love it if you handed them your guitar.

2) Daedal

If you are familiar with Greek mythology, you may have heard of Daedulus, who built a labyrinth so complex even he could hardly find his way out of it, to house the man/bull creature called the Minotaur. Since he was the only one who knew the labyrinth’s secrets, King Minos locked him in a tower to keep him quiet. He escaped by crafting wings out of wax for himself and his son Icarus, who ended up flying too close to the sun so that the wings melted, and plummeted into the sea. Daedulus ended up cursing his own skill as an artist.

The word “daedal,” an adjective, came to mean something that is particularly artistic. It also carries the implication that the thing it refers to is overly designed and complex, such as a Web site adorned with eight flashing banners that triggers sixteen pop-up quizzes. Perhaps that girl who sits next to you in math class and spends the whole hour adding individual hairs to the mane of the horse she is drawing is being a bit daedal. (Or perhaps, like young horse doodler Leonardo da Vinci, she is secretly a genius.)

3) Caravansary (or Caravanserai)

In the days when many goods were transported in long trading caravans across the desert, especially the silk routes through Persia, enterprising townspeople would set up “caravan palaces” for the drivers to stop at. These typically included stalls and fodder for the pack animals, baths, bed and dinner for the humans. There might also be shops selling travelers’ supplies, and excess goods unloaded by the merchants passing through.

Now that merchandise is more likely to be transported in trucks than on the backs of camels, the caravansary’s modern equivalent is a truck stop, where people who have been driving across the vast countryside for days can enjoy a shower, a nap in their rig, and a fast-food taco (personally, I would prefer to eat a camel.)

4) Bedizen

Bedizen: This is a modification of the even older term “dizen,” which means to dress a distaff in flax. (The distaff is the part of the spinning wheel that holds the unspun flax; flax is a plant once used to produce fibers for clothing. Contrary to what you may have learned from the Rumpelstiltskin story, do not count on using a spinning wheel to turn straw into gold as a reliable source of income.)

With the “be” attached to it, this word means to ornament something or someone in gaudy finery. You might, for instance, say that the family on your block who puts up their Christmas tree lights on the day after Halloween (and keeps them up until the Fourth of July) has bedizened their house in candy canes, glowing Santas and weird animatronic reindeer.

5) Dumbledore

Long before J.K. Rowling appropriated this word to christen Professor Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts, it was a slang term in southern England for the fat, fuzzy, drowsy insects now known throughout the English-speaking world as bumblebees. “Dore” is from the Old English for insect, and “dumble”, like the now-popular “bumble,” is an onomatopoeic adjective for the droning hum the bee makes with its wings. If you saw this particular wizard buzzing around your garden, would you swat him?

Today the word Dumbeldore has the greatest resonance with reference to Harry Potter. A loud and quite amuzing instance of this resonance is the viral YouTube video below.

Feedback

What old word do you think is ready for a comeback, and why?

25. whole/ hole: I ate the whole bag of chips to fill the hole in my stomach.

26. incidence/ incidents: This situation was not a singular incidence, as there have been many similar incidents.

27. instants/ instance: In an instance, the rocket took off. The rocket did not take off in an “instants,” which is an odd word that simply mean the plural of “instant”.

28. insight/ incite: The article gave some people insight into the phenomenon of religious dogmatism, but for others, it merely incited anger and offense.

29. its/ it’s: It’s hard to find a shag carpet, as its texture has not been in vogue for some time.

30. later/ latter: I’ll either see you sooner or later, though my guess is the latter.

31. lay/ lie: I try not to lie, but I lay down whenever I get the chance.

32. peace/ piece: Peace will never happen as long as everyone wants a piece of the Middle East.

33. plain/ plane: The size of the plane is plain to see.

34. pore/ pour: Pour some of this medication onto your skin to shrink your pores.

35. precedence/ precedent: Our policies set the precedent, as we always give precedence to the oldest member.

36. presence/ presents: The presence of my parents at my birthday celebration always implies more presents.

37. principal/ principle: The most principal principle is that you never plagiarize.

38. precede/ proceed: I will precede you in line, after which you may proceed.

39. rain/ reign/ rein: The rain falls from the sky. The reign is the rule of a monarch. Reins are what you use to ride a horse.

40. stationary/ stationery: Something stationary does not move; stationery is what you write letters on.

41. their/ they’re/ there: They’re the type who’d shop for their jeans there.

42. threw/ through: As they drove through the tunnel, Jenny threw the window open.

43. to/ too/ two: Two other boys went to the mall too.

44. vein/ vain: Because I am vain and don’t like track marks in my skin, I hate it when the doctor sticks needles in my veins.

45. waist/ waste: Waste no time trimming your waist.

46. weak/ week: I feel weak this week, because I’m dieting for ten days.

47. wear/ where/ were/ we’re: Were you like your sister, you would wear your new dress to where we’re going.

48. weather/ whether: Whether the weather will stay as nice as today remains to be seen.

49. whose/ who’s: Whose jacket is this? Who’s going to the store with me?

50. your/ you’re: You’re the smartest person I know, as no one else I know has your IQ.

Well Confucious for sure didn’t invent confusion, but Miss Panama is clearly confused.

Luckily, Eduify is the writing coach that is always by your side. We know how easily language can become confusing, and how easily words can become confused with one another. Confucious does sound like confusion, regardless of whether you’re speaking Spanish or English, so it’s (sort of) understandable how in a moment of pressure, Miss Panama associated these words together.

There are so many words in the English language that we tend to associate together, even when they have little to do with one another. Here is a list of words whose usage is commonly confused, and an example of correct usage for each word.

1. accept/except: He accepted all his mother’s gifts, except for the ugly Christmas sweater she obviously got at Costco.
2. advice/advise: You are not advised to disregard Miss Cleo’s advice, as she can see into your future.
3. affect/ effect: Not having a pair of 3-D glasses negatively affected my appreciation of the special effects in Jonas Brothers 3D available on Blu Ray.
4. allot/ a lot: I’m going to allot some room in my stomach for a lot of this candy.
5. already/ all ready: It’s not yet noon and I’m already all ready to go!
6. all together/ altogether: This was altogether the worst meal we have eaten all together.
7. altar/alter: The altar I built in my room to the Twilight movie might alter my chances of landing a boyfriend.
8. beside/ besides: Besides, there’s already a piece of pizza beside you, so why do you need mine?
9. by/ bye/ buy: I will buy a good-bye present for my cousin at that new gas station by the 7-11.
10. canvas/ canvass: I am running for Mayor and would appreciate it if you canvassed for me by carrying this oil-on-canvas self-portrait of me all around town.
11. capital/ capitol: The capital of France is across the ocean from the Capitol buildings in Washington D.C.
12. cite/ site/ sight: I’m a law enforcement official, and I’m going to cite you for jay-walking within my sight, right here at the site of the crime.
13. clothes/ cloths: The cloth that he used to make those clothes was the most exquisite burlap.
14. coarse/ course: The coarse language she used toward her teacher of course landed her in detention during those years, and it was not surprising to anyone that she eventually landed in jail in her adult life.
15. complement/ compliment: The ranch dressing was a perfect complement to the wings, but it did not compliment my figure to continue eating it.
16. council/ counsel: The council of witches regularly meets to counsel the cats in the neighborhood on how to misbehave.
17. decent/ descent/ dissent: The descent of my grade from a decent B to an embarrassing F was the result of a dissent between my textbook and I.
18. desert/ dessert: The desert is no where to go looking for dessert involving mangoes or any other tropical fruit.
19. device/ devise: I devised a time-traveling device which, if properly used, will take me back to the time of the dinosaurs.
20. faint/ feint: I feinted ingeniously with 9P in my last game of chess with Cecil, and he was so taken aback he actually fainted over his Americano and petits fours.
21. farther/ further: I can go no farther on this journey until I read further in this book.
22. formally/ formerly: She’s not formally married to him right now, but she was formerly married to someone else before.
23. forth/ fourth: The fourth piece of pizza always does me in, until I am forced to go forth and lay down for a while.
24. here/ hear: If you put your ear here, to this shell, you can hear the ocean.

If you want to see more words commonly confused, check back tomorrow for words 25-50! This will be an ongoing series on Eduify’s blog of words commonly confused, to help you students differentiate between distinct ideas and write better and more clearly.

And always remember, if you have any confusion as to the usage of any of the above terms, make sure to look up the usage in a dictionary.

However, as peppered as my speech patterns are with non-standard English, I try not to bring my own personal language into the sphere of academic writing. I couldn’t imagine what would go through an English teacher’s mind if I turned in a paper that said, “Yo, Herman Melville’s gynormous book about Moby Dick was super phat, cuz Ishmael will be one of my fave, most coolest protagonist forevs LOL.” Like, automatic F, right?

To help you write better, I compiled a list of 5 words you should avoid in all your papers. I understand the importance if irony, but the irony of using grammar and spelling like “Dey’s awluz at it, sah, en dey do mos’ kill me, dey skyers me so,” even in a paper about The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn (which that quote is directly lifted from) would completely be lost on your professor. So, without further ado:

1. Irregardless. This word is completely unacceptable in any universe where proper grammar is encouraged. According to Wikipedia, “Irregardless is a term meaning in spite of or anyway, that has caused controversy since it first appeared in the early twentieth century. It is generally listed in dictionaries as “incorrect” or “nonstandard”. This word is used to mean “regardless,” but with the inclusion of the “ir-” preceding the word, it is formed into a double negative. Logically, “irregardless” would mean “not regardless,” but of course, that’s not the way it’s ever used. Long story short: avoid.

2. Anyways. This word seems to creep up in our vocabulary in those fugitive moments where we have nothing to say, mostly in situations involving awkward pauses, like “Um… right… so anyways…”.  Awkward moments should not be make all the more awkward by bad grammar, so perhaps you should cut the “s” and just use “anyway” (a perfectly acceptable word) or “anyhow” next time. This also applies to the word “anywho,” a less common though still egregiously utlized non-word.

3. Alot. There are few things you can do to an English teacher worse than employing the word “alot” in any written assignment. But I’m sure you’ve already been told this, many times, so hopefully I am just being redundant here.

4. Alright. The term “alright” is heavily contested by people both for and against its existence. Daily Writing Tips advises, “In 1965, The Who told us “The Kids are Alright,” spawning generations of the use of alright in music. Generally, most editors and teachers don’t think “alright” is all right. If you’re in doubt, it’s best to stick with the more widely accepted two-word “all right,” especially in formal academic or professional writing.”

5. Nevermind. I see the word “nevermind” everywhere, even though nevermind is in a Neverland of never-words that are never to be found in any grammarphile’s proper paper-writing lexicon. In the Mirriam-Webster dictionary, “nevermind” is listed as a conjunction. The proper term is “never mind”. Searching through Wikipedia, “never mind” brings up, “Never mind is a command which means “it is not important,” “do not be concerned,” or “I withdraw my previous statement.” If you search for
“nevermind,” you don’t get that same meaning. Instead you get linked to a Nirvana album.