A Horse Named Charley

Charley Horse. A muscular pain, cramping, or stiffness that results from a strain or bruise.

— Webster's Dictionary

In March 1886, a sportswriter for The Louisville Courier-Journal reported that a local baseball player was suffering a "brand new disease" called a Charley Horse.

In fact, sportswriters around the country had been reporting many instances of the new disease.

A writer for The Boston Globe reported that the disease would cause a ballplayer to run around the field "after the fashion of a boy astride of a wooden horse, sometimes called a Charley Horse."

But what, readers wondered, was a pro baseball Charley Horse?

A writer for The Wheeling Intelligencer unearthed the answer:

"The disease consists of a peculiar contraction and hardening of the muscles and tendons of the thigh, to which ballplayers are liable from sudden starting and stopping in chasing balls. 

"Shortstop Jack Glasscock is said to have originated the name because the way the men limped around reminded him of an old horse he once owned named Charley."

While they agreed on the symptoms, not all sportswriters accepted the name's origin story.

A sportswriter for The Chicago Tribune attributed the name to horse racing, where a lame horse was called a "Charley."

A writer for The Grand Rapids Daily Democrat said the name came from manufacturing, where lame horses called "Charlies" were used to pull carts.

And a writer for The Washington Post said that the name came from a ballplayer,  Charlie "Hoss" Radbourn, who often experienced leg cramps while running bases.

While it might seem odd that sportswriters of the 1880s would label Charley Horse a disease, keep in mind that physicians today say that frequent Charley Horses—especially the nocturnal kind—can signal other, fatal diseases, including alcoholism, ALS, cardiovascular disease, cirrhosis, diabetes, kidney failure, Parkinson’s, MS, and lung cancer.

Photo by Rachel Morrison

Words

It's only words and words are all I have to take your heart away.

— Barry Gibb

A stickler for words, I draw the line when you coin words to spare a group of people hurt feelings.

I'm not advocating the use of slurs and vulgarisms.

I refer to euphemisms.

Euphemisms are so Victorian.

So prim were they, Victorians couldn't abide mention of a breast or thigh at the dinner table. So they invented the terms white meat and dark meat. 

They couldn't mention the bathroom. They had to say restroom. 

They couldn't mention pants, only unmentionables. 

I'll take dysphemisms—straight talk—over euphemisms any day. 

Dog house over pet lodge. 

Stock market crash over equity retreat. 

Kill over pacify.

I've always been fond of comedian Jonathan Winters' famous dysphemism.

Winters, who suffered from bipolar disorder, was never committed to the psychiatric ward. 

He was sent to the rubber room.

Euphemisms are useful, of course, when we need to discuss taboo subjects or wish to shield others from unnecessary sorrow. 

They function in these instances as "verbal escape hatches."

But I lose patience with euphemisms when they're used dishonestly, whether by governments, corporations, political parties, or do-gooders.

When you say you plan revenue enhancements, do you think I don't know you mean higher taxes?

When you say new family size, do you think I don't know you shrank the amount of product in your package?

When you say climate change, do you think I don't know Earth's atmosphere is getting hotter?

When you say we need to aid the unhoused, do your think I don't know you mean the homeless?

Give me a break.

Your word substitutions are worthless.

Triplicate

Let's have some new clichés.

― Samuel Goldwyn

The cliché Close, but no cigar stems from late 19th-century carnivals.

Winners at the wheel of chance took home a cigar for picking the lucky number.

Losers won only the wheel operator's condolence: "Close, but no cigar!"

An inveterate loser at the game might very well get the cold shoulder from his girlfriend.

The cliché stems from early 19th-century dinner parties.

A guest who overstayed his welcome at a dinner party would be served a cut of shoulder meat—the toughest part of the animal—cold.

Being served the "cold shoulder" was a strong hint: it's time you left.

But sometimes the hint wasn't strong enough.

Especially if the guest was a smart aleck.

Another cliché with early 19th-century origins, "Smart Aleck" was the nickname the New York City cops gave Aleck Hoag, a fraudster who bilked men while they consorted with his accomplice and wife, who would pose as a prostitute.

Aleck earned the nickname "smart" when he started bragging he would no longer bribe the cops to escape arrest.

Folks ain't got no use for braggin'.

Impressed

"I'm impressed."

With snark being our default reaction to everything, perhaps we don't say it often enough.

The verb impress, meaning "to have a strong effect on the mind," entered English in the 14th century.

Its root was the Latin impressus, meaning "stamped," "indented," or "imprinted."

A marvelous event impressed you, stamping its mark on your mind.

A second, less joyous meaning of the verb arose two centuries later.

During wars in the 16th century, when the king needed to fill the ranks of the Royal Navy, he would press seafarers—usually sailors with the merchant fleet—into naval service. 

The king in fact claimed the permanent right to impress sailors any time he chose.

To do so, he would dispatch "press gangs" to roam the coastal towns. The press gangs were little more than bands of brutal thugs, led by ruthless naval officers. Often they'd snatch any man they spotted—regardless of seafaring experience.

To be "impressed"—a fearsome event—meant to be "kidnapped into the service."

The practice of impressing men into the Royal Navy lasted well into the 19th century, when crown service was made voluntary.

The Way Some People Spell

I don't see any use in having a uniform way of spelling words.

— Mark Twain

Mark Twain thought that policing the way people spelled was a merry chase, like policing the way people dressed. Thorstein Veblen called it a "conspicuous waste," "archaic, cumbrous, and ineffective."

My grammar school teachers, on the other hand, taught me that spelling was like math: there was one, and only one, right answer.

Of course, that was the early 1960s. 

They also taught us that policemen were our friends, that beatniks were dirty, and that America was the greatest country on earth.

Critical Race Theorists would say they were abusing their authority in order to oppress us and make us conform to the "dominant identity;" but, actually, they were following the lead of a mild-mannered Connecticut teacher, Noah Webster, and teaching us to be Americans.

Frustrated by the outdated teaching materials on hand, Webster revised America's grammar school textbooks immediately after the Revolutionary War, to rid them of references to the king. He also wrote a famous dictionary to rid the new nation's language of Briticisms. In the process, Webster simplified the spelling of hundreds of words. Travelling, for example, became traveling; colour became color; and publick became public. 

Webster believed his spellings, being humbler than their British counterparts were "of vast political consequence" to the young republic. 

And perhaps they were.

But we're an old republic now, soon to become a dictatorship. 

Humble is passé.

We don't care whether you spell smoking as smocking or coffee as covfefe. Just as long as you don't mention white supremacy, marginalization, or dominant-determined identifies.

For my part, call me a dinosaur, but I like Webster's democratic way with words.

Mystery

It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery.

— Sherlock Holmes

There are mysteries and there are mysteries.

Mystery (meaning a "puzzle") is a Middle English word derived from the Latin mysterium, meaning a "secret rite" or "initiation."

The medieval Catholic Church taught—and still teaches—that Jesus' life was an amalgam of mysteries, inexplicable to mortals, but worthy of contemplation. It used the Rosary to catalog these puzzles. A mystery meant an event in the life of Christ.

In the Eastern Orthodox Church, mysteries was the term used to name the Seven Sacraments. So, for example, marriage was a mystery. (I can buy that.)

But mystery had a secular meaning, too, at the time.

A mystery meant an occupation, a trade, or a guild.

So, for example, the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers, the guild for the retailers of fish in medieval London, were referred to as a "mystery."

Thanks to their royal charters, these mysteries were powerful monopolies, plying their might through arcane regulations.

They dictated who could sell fish in London and who couldn't; set all prices for their goods; and ran their own courts of law to settle disputes between sellers and suppliers.

The fishmongers, for example, fixed the prices for soles, turbots, herrings, oysters, and eels. They also forbid wholesalers from selling fish directly to the public; outlawed the selling of fish indoors; and prohibited the sale of any fish except salted ones after they were two days old.

The mysteries were also inordinately wealthy. They owned and ran their own apprentice programs, private schools, hospitals, poorhouses, and colonial plantations.

The mysteries' grip on commerce only ended with the rise of capitalism in the 19th century.

We echo the medieval mysteries' power today whenever we speak of guarding "trade secrets."

The Filthiest Word in the Language

Retirement is the filthiest word in the language.

— Ernest Hemingway

Some words should be retired.

Retired is one of them.

Just as we no longer call anyone "colored" or "retarded," we shouldn't call anyone retired.

The word means, to most people, "purposeless."

Hemingway told his biographer and friend, A. E. Hotchner, that retirement was like a terrible death. 

"The worst death for anyone is to lose the center of his being, the thing he really is," Hemingway said. 

"Whether by choice or by fate, to retire from what you do and what makes you what you are, is to back up into the grave."

"Retired" means purposeless: half-dead, half-gone, half-forgotten.

Over the hill. Out to pasture. Lingering about with one foot in the grave.

Retirement, indeed, is the filthiest word in the language.

Let's Nix the Shibboleths

Then they said unto him, "Say now Shibboleth," and he said "Sibboleth," and they took him and slew him.

— Judges 12:6

The Miami Herald last month called on progressives to stop using the word Latinx.

"Stop trying to make the term 'Latinx' a thing," the editors wrote. "The so-called 'Latinx community' doesn’t even want to be called Latinx."

It turns out 98% of Latinos don't like the word.

I don't care for it either.

It sounds like a brand of laxative. (I can see the tagline now: Latinx. Pity the stool.)

I don't care for shibboleths in general.

Shibboleths often begin life as genteelisms meant to foster goodwill; but they just as often devolve—quickly—into political passwords.

The word shibboleth (Hebrew for "corncob") comes to us from the Old Testament, where we're told that sentries in Gilead used shibboleth as a watchword, knowing their enemies couldn't pronounce the "h."

I pity the fool who couldn't say shibboleth. He was executed on the spot.

I remember recoiling in horror the first time I heard a speaker say Latinx—not because I had no toilet paper, but because I thought, "Oh, no, here's another angry group to worry about offending."

But enough already!

With the real threats to democracy posed by the right, it's time we speak plainly and candidly—without fear of causing offense.

All this precious progressive "rebranding" has gotten way-too Orwellian.

"Some people love to feel offended because it makes them feel important," novelist Oliver Markus Malloy said. 

"When your only tool is a hammer, suddenly every problem starts to look like a nail. And when the only time you feel relevant is when you claim to be offended, suddenly everything looks offensive.”

He's right.

Let's be blunt and to the point.

Let's nix the shibboleths.

Supply Chain Problem

The real index of civilization is when people are kinder than they need to be.

— Louis de Bernieres

Novelist Louis de Bernieres' marvelous notion of civility as "surplus kindness" arrived in my inbox today thanks to photographer Peter Ralston. 

The word kind, meaning "doing good for another," derives from the Old English word kynn, meaning "family." 

Kynn was borrowed from kunją the ancient German word for "kinfolk." (Kunją survives today in the German words Kind, meaning "child," and Kinder, meaning "children.") 

Just as telling, the word kindness in Old English (kyndnes) also meant "surplus."
 

So "surplus kindness" is a redundancy. 

Except that there's a shortage of kindness in our nation today. 

We need to fix our supply chain problem. 

Quickly.

Monikers

Monikers have always fascinated me.

The Sultan of Swat. 

The Wizard of Menlo Park.

The Angel of the Battlefield. 

The Desert Fox. 

The Elephant Man.  

Moniker is a hobo's term meaning "nickname." It was borrowed directly from Shelta, the form of Gaelic spoken by Irish gypsies.

But not all monikers are alike.

Sobriquets are praiseworthy monikers. 

Epithets are derogatory ones.

A sobriquet—derived from the Old French word for jest—is bestowed out of fondness (the Old French word sobriquet literally meant a "chuck under the chin.") A sobriquet is also bestowed out of awe. The Man of Steel is an example.

An epithet—derived from the Greek word for added—is bestowed in order to disparage.* The Mutton-Eating Monarch is an example.

Grammarians would say sobriquets and epithets are adjectives (adjectival phrases). But onomasticians insist that, because they substitute for a person's proper name, sobriquets and epithets are in fact pronouns.

If that's the case, I might start insisting my pronoun of choice isn't he, she, or they, but "The Maven of Monikers."

Sadly, fanciful monikers are fast becoming extinct. But some are ageless. 

Among the hundreds of ageless sobriquets, my favorite include:

• The Bard (William Shakespeare)
• The Boss (Bruce Springsteen)
• The Duke (John Wayne)
• The Father of His Country (George Washington)
• The Godfather of Soul (James Brown)
• The Governator (Arnold Schwarzenneger) 
• The Great Emancipator (Abraham Lincoln)
• The King of Rock & Roll (Elvis Presley)
• The Lion of Round Top (Strong Vincent)
• The Man from Uncle (Napoleon Solo)
• The Prince of Peace (Jesus Christ)
• The Swamp Fox (Francis Marion)

Among the hundreds of ageless epithets, my favorite include:

• The Bastard of Bolton (Ramsay Bolton)
• The Boston Strangler (Albert DeSalvo)
• The Butcher of Lyon (Klaus Barbie)
• The Hick from French Lick (Larry Bird)
• The Iron Lady (Margaret Thatcher)
• The Kid (William Bonney)
• The Little Corporal (Napoleon Bonaparte)
• The Louisville Lip (Mohammed Ali)
• The Old Pretender (James Francis Edward Stuart)
• The Tangerine Tornado (Donald Trump)
• The Teflon Don (John Gotti)
• The Unabomber (Ted Kaczynski)

What are your favs?

*Nickname literally means "added name." The word derives from the Old English word ekename. Over time, English speakers garbled it. "Babe Ruth had an ekename" became "Babe Ruth had a nickname."

Red Tape

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

— Honoré de Balzac

It took me five trips to Delaware's DMV recently to get a new driver's license and registration.

Five.

At every step in the months-long process, the clerks provided verbal and printed instructions to follow, both of which were always—always—wrong.

The procedures were Byzantine and no one I encountered knew what he was doing.

Complexity and frightening incompetence prolonged my agony—although I must admit I grew fond of the hot dogs. 

(There was a long queue at the entrance to the building, where a vendor sold Polish dogs from a cart. Two dollars bought you a hot dog, chips, and a soda; by my third trip, I’d become a regular. Mo and I were on a first-name basis.)

My ordeal's origins were evident from the start.

Although the DMV used yellow tape to demarcate the queue, the underlying problem was red tape.

"Red tape has killed more people than bullets," novelist Ben Bova once said.

It almost killed me. (The hot dogs didn't help.)

The expression red tape enjoys a six-century history.

It originated in the 1600s, when nobles and lawyers began—literally—to bind batches of paperwork with red tape.

To open a batch, you had to "cut through the red tape."

Red tape went from literal to metaphorical use three centuries later.

Dickens, Carlyle, Longfellow and other writers all used the expression in the 19th century to deride bureaucracies.

During the American Civil War, bureaucrats in Washington, DC, took red tape to new lengths, using roll after roll after roll of it to seal envelopes and bundle documents, according to the National Archives.

In fiscal year 1864 alone, the War Department purchased 154 miles of the stuff—nearly twice the length of Delaware.

HAT TIP: Ann Ramsey, no friend of red tape, suggested this post. 

Get the Name of the Dog

My task is, by the power of the written word, 

to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, 

before all, to make you see.

— Joseph Conrad

In The Elements of Style, Strunk and White pooh-pooh lazy writers—the majority—because they're so often satisfied with imprecision.

You see their slothfulness on display every day:

• "The Searchers is the greatest Western ever made."
  
  
• "The number of Americans diagnosed with 'broken heart' syndrome has steadily risen in the past 15 years."
  
  
• "Some records from The British Invasion in the mid-'60s can be very valuable."

By saying so little, sentences like these tax readers' minds. They squander readers' energy in guessing what the writer means to say.

Good writing avoids imprecision by drawing word-pictures.

Word-pictures comprise concrete details—specifics—that allow readers easily to imagine the world the writer seeks to depict. 

Anything less is filler. Eyewash. Baloney. Horse hockey.

• "The Searchers is the greatest Western ever made" merely tells you the writer likes this cowboy movie.

• "The number of Americans diagnosed with 'broken heart' syndrome has steadily risen in the past 15 years" merely tells you that incidents of a weird disease have increased.

• "Some records from The British Invasion in the mid-'60s can be very valuable" merely tells you there's demand for vinyl recordings by bands like Peter & Gordon.

Precision, on the other hand, would have told you, among other things, what distinguishes The Searchers from all the other hundreds of Westerns; how fast cases of "broken heart" are accelerating—and whether the disease affects a lot of people, or only a few; and which mop-top bands' records are hot.

Lazy writers favor the generic, as Victorian sociologist Herbert Spencer said in The Philosophy of Style; and, because they do, they always leave readers guessing. They should, instead, aim to produce "vivid impressions" with their words.

Writers should avoid, Spencer said, abstract sentences like "When the manners, customs, and amusements of a nation are cruel and barbarous, the penal code will be severe." They should write instead "When men delight in battles, bullfights, and gladiatorial combat, they will punish by hanging, burning, and the rack."

Spencer calls the use of vivid word-pictures a "thorough maxim of composition."

Writing coach Peter Roy Clark calls Spencer's maxim "Get the name of the dog" (or the "Fido Theorem").

"Such was my affection for this writing strategy," Clark once told an interviewer, "I wanted to use it as a book title. 

"Anticipating the literalism of SEO, my publisher decided the title should reflect what the book was really about. In the end, Get the Name of the Dog became Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer. 

"Get the name of the dog" does appear in Clark's Writing Tools as Tool Number 14. But it's much more important.

"It ranks as Number 1 in my heart," Clark said. "Every strategic move I’ve shared over 30 years derives its existence from the Fido Theorem. 

"'Get the name of the dog' stands, for me, for the whole. In other words, if the writer remembers to get the dog’s name, he or she will be curious enough and attentive enough to gather all the relevant details in their epiphanic particularity."

Got an email to write? A memo? A report? 

Get the name of the dog.

Fire the Writer

Well, that's putting your foot in your mouth. Or your toe in your mouth.

On its website, the amateur-league baseball team Savannah Bananas boasts that "we toe the line."

We are not your typical baseball team. We are different. We take chances. We toe the line. We test the rules. We challenge the way things are suppose to be.

The writer doesn't know the meaning of "toe the line." 

The idiom means do what is expected or act according to another's rules.

You can't both be a maverick and toe the line.

Dear Writer: strike one, you're out! 

NOTE: Toe the line comes not from baseball, but track and field. Officials used to shout, "Toe the line!" Now they shout, "On your mark!"

Scuttlebutt

Scuttlebutt is the only thing free in the modern era.

— Ugwu Kelvin

Before there was water-cooler talk, there was scuttlebutt.

An 18th-century nautical term, a scuttlebutt was a cask of drinking water kept on deck for the crew.

Scuttlebutts had a gaping hole, so sailors could dip a cup into them. They would often gather around the ship's scuttlebutt to gossip.

The word compounded scuttle, meaning a "hole in a ship," and butt, meaning a "barrel."

Scuttle was a 15th-century term derived from the Spanish escotilla, meaning "hatch."

In battle, when a captain preferred to sink rather than surrender his vessel, he would order sailors to "scuttle the ship" by cutting holes in the hull.

The nautical term bore no relationship to the inland scuttle, meaning "dish," "cup," or "bucket." The inland word was a 14th-century borrowing from the Latin scutella, meaning "platter."

By the 19th century, shipboard rumors came to be known collectively as scuttlebutt, the maritime version of fake news—the lies rival newspaper publishers accused each other of printing in the 19th century.   

Inland rumors, on the other hand, when they didn't appear in newspapers were spread through the grapevine in the 19th century. In America, at least.

No sooner than Samuel Morse invented the telegraph (1844) did a company named Western Union string thousands upon thousands of miles of telegraph wire across the country. 

Americans thought the company's labyrinthine handiwork resembled a grapevine, and telegraph messages were said to arrive "through the grapevine."

During the Civil War, when a soldier wanted to vouch for a suspect rumor, he'd say, "I heard it through the grapevine," meaning "it must be true." 

Rumors themselves soon came to be known collectively as grapevine (or what the British would call humbug).

Now that you've heard them, be sure to share these facts with colleagues—on line or at the water cooler.

Flailing About

Johnson has been flailing about desperately.

— New York Magazine

The cognitive dissonance Republican Senator Ron Johnson suffers would pain an intelligent man, according to New York Magazine. Nonetheless, Johnson must wonder how he can call the louts who assaulted the Capitol on January 6 "tourists."

"Johnson has been flailing about desperately in search of a resolution to this contradiction," the magazine says.

The verb flail, meaning to "whip," is an 11th-century word that originally meant to "thresh" or "winnow." 

Knight wielding a "flail"

A flail was a Mediaeval farm tool made of wood and leather. Its name was borrowed from the Latin name for the same tool, flagellum, from which we also get the verb flagellate, meaning to "flog."

When we see a flail today, we think of knights doing battle, but the flail was never a weapon. 

Mediaeval artists merely convinced us it was.

By depicting flail-wielding knights in illuminated manuscripts, medieval artists led later viewers to imagine that these wily cavalrymen must have used flails to terrorize foes. 

But, the "flails" wielded by knights were actually goads—wood-and-rope cattle prods that somewhat resemble flails. Knights used goads to prod their horses.

Medieval flail

The spiked iron "flails" in museum collections today are in fact simulacra: 19-century copies of a 10-century weapon that never existed.

So when you read that Johnson is "flailing about," don't think of knights of old. 

To flail about means to "whip around," to "engage in erratic movements."

An Exercise in Gobbledygook

Anything is better than not to write clearly.

— Somerset Maugham

"Dear Neighbors," the 16-page letter begins.

The author, Jean Wodnicki, say she hopes to advise Champlain Towers residents of the "state of the building," because answering their pesky questions has become an annoyance and "all-consuming." 

The issue at hand: a repairs estimate for $15 million. The homeowners association, over which she presides, has almost no money.

Three long, boring paragraphs in, Wodnicki notes that the building's state is lousy and "has gotten significantly worse" since the estimate was received. 

It appears the pillars are "spalling."

I've read Wodnicki's letter—sent three months before last week's collapse of Champlain Towers South—and can only say don't ever send a letter like this.

Anything is better than not to write clearly.

Monday-morning quarterbacking is easy; but were I to have written Wodnicki's letter, I might have opened it like this:

Dear Neighbors,

We have talked for years about the need to repair our crumbling building. There's no more time for talk. Now is the time to proceed. The repair will cost $15 million. Because there is little cash on hand, all of us will have to pony up.

With the benefit of clairvoyance, I would have added a second lead-in paragraph:

Dear Neighbors,

We have talked for years about the need to repair our crumbling building. There's no more time for talk. Now is the time to proceed. The repair will cost $15 million. Because there is little cash on hand, all of us will have to pony up. 

If we don't pony up, 150 of us will be crushed to death in three months. That's painful—much more painful than finding the money.

Clairvoyance or not, I would have made sure the letter fit on one side of a piece of paper, and that readers understood by the close that the repairs must commence—immediately.

Jean Wodnicki's letter is an extended exercise in gobbledygook sandwiched in self-pity.

“An honest tale speeds best being plainly told," Shakespeare said.

Don't ever send a letter like this.

Fossils

The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson famously called language "fossil poetry."

Like a seaside cliff, he said, language comprises fossilized images—out-of-date tropes that have "long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin."

Some words are obsolete except when we use them in idioms. 

Linguists, too, call these words "fossils."

We'd never use them otherwise—and don't even know what the words mean.

A bumper

A few examples include:

Bumper. We're comfortable saying, "Farmers enjoyed a bumper crop last season," but we'd never say, "Everyone, raise your bumper!" A bumper was a 17th-century tavern glass, so called because a drinker would bump it down on the bar when offering a toast. First, however, the barkeep had to fill it to the brim with grog. The word eventually became synonymous with "voluminous."

A spiked horseshoe

Roughshod. We say, "The backfield ran roughshod over the defense," but we'd never say, "The players were roughshod in Adidas." In the 16th century, roughshod referred to spiked horseshoes. The spikes improved traction, but were brutal on fallen infantry when the cavalry overran them. With the addition of "run," the word came to mean to "clobber" or "punish."

A pinking

Pinking. We're comfortable saying, "My pinking shears have orange handles," but we'd never say, "I was pretty drunk when I got this pinking." A 17-century word, a pinking was a decoration on a body part—in other words, a tattoo (to pink someone meant to "pierce" him). To prevent bad luck, sailors in the British navy would cover themselves with "pinkings," but the word over time came to refer only to the tool we use to add decorative edges to cloth.

Wend. We say, "I'll wend my way home," but we'd never say, "I'll wend to the office on Monday." The verb wend, meaning to "go," dates to the 13th century, when people wended everywhere—the field, the barn, the privy, the square, the church, the market, the castle, the theater—but today we only "wend our way." We never just wend.

Full of sleight

Sleight. We'd readily say, "McConnell performed a sleight of hand this week," but we'd never say, "McConnell is full of sleight." Sleight is a 14th-century word that meant "cleverness," "nimbleness," "cunning," or "trickery." It was the latter sense from which we got the idiom sleight of hand.

Lots of words that grow obsolete never fossilize; they merely fade. A few examples are:

Sockdolager. We'd say an incomparable person was an "original," but in the 19th century she'd be a sockdolager. (Sockdolager was the last word Lincoln ever heard spoken.)

Pumblechook

Pumblechook. We'd call Bernie Madoff a "crook," but in the 19th century he'd be a pumblechook. The word came from Great Expectations, where Dickens described the despicable character Uncle Pumblechook as the "basest of swindlers."

Shoddyocracy. We'd say, "Champlain Towers is shoddy," but we'd never say, "Florida is home to the shoddyocracy." In the 19th century, an entire class of people enriched themselves by selling shoddy merchandise. Newspapers gave these pumblechooks a collective name: the shoddyocracy.

Shrift. Before they were executed, 14th-century felons were permitted a shrift—a confession to a priest. But it had to be brief, so the mob's entertainment wasn't delayed. We still know the word from the idiom short shrift, which means "little to no consideration." But the word has otherwise faded from use.

Morphiated. Cocaine and morphine abuse were common in the 19th century (think of Sigmund Freud and Sherlock Holmes). A user who we'd say is "stoned" was in the 19th century morphiated. I would not feel so all alone: everybody must get morphiated.

Linguists used to believe words had a shelf-life of from 8,000 to 9,000 years; but, as they have recently discovered, 23 fossil words are truly ancient—more than 15,000 years old. One study calls these words, preserved for millennia with "remarkable fidelity," ultraconserved.

Deriving from "Proto-Eurasiatic"—humanity's first language—the ultraconserved words include mother, brother, man, fire, ashes, and worm.

That last word sounds fishy to me.