When I was in college, I took a linguistics and etymology course that was one of my favorites. This book made me think of that course. It is a compendium of words once common and no longer used, where they came from, what they meant, and in some cases what they have morphed into over time.

Petty-fogger - a term that is exactly what it sounds like--someone who promotes quarrels or encourages going to law for trivial reasons. Can’t imagine why we lost that word, but I think today we just call them ambulance-chasers.

Usufruct - Which was just to indicate the right of anyone to windfall fruit. The shepherds would take their crooks and pull fruit down, which is the origin of the current meaning of the word crook. How neat is that?

Scaramouch - a fencing term that evolved into a modern football “skirmish”.

Uzzle Pye - This one blew me away. Know the nursery rhyme “Sing a song of sixpence”? When the pie was open the birds began to sing. Did you ever take that literally? I didn’t. Well, seems they actually made pies, baked the crusts, tethered live birds in them, put a crust on top and then released the birds in a celebration.

Scuttled-Butt - A spot on the ship where sailors gathered to gossip. So, if you heard it at the scuttled butt, you passed it on. And, of course, it became scuttlebutt, which we still like to get in on from time to time.

And one that I did recognize right away:

Resurrectionist - A grave robber who exhumed bodies and sold them to scientist. The practice and the need for the term have gone, thankfully, but we still have the literary figure of Jerry Cruncher in [b:A Tale of Two Cities|1953|A Tale of Two Cities|Charles Dickens|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1344922523s/1953.jpg|2956372] to give an accurate depiction of what was entailed in the trade.

Needless to say, this is just a minor sampling of the words and stories included in this interesting book. I love words, and I read a number of classics where I am likely to run into some of these archaic terms, so the book serves a more immediate purpose. If you are like me, and you think words are worth studying in and of themselves, dig in, this one is fun.

“He hath been at a great feast of languages and stolen the scrapes” - William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost
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At first, I took umbrage with the title of this little book. Forgotten English suggests we'd be treated to a dictionary of sorts, full of archaic English words, long since fallen out of favour. And yet, early on, we're told about buggery and succubi and gammon and ambergris and hobnails. Sure, I probably wouldn't use all of those words in polite conversation, and definitely not in the same sentence, but forgotten? Not really.

I chalked this up to the book's American origins and figured it should be called Old Words from British English that are Mostly Forgotten in the UK and, Like, Definitely not Heard in the US. With that I was ready to polish off the book and get on with my new-found career of giving new, accurate titles to old works of literature.

But then I realised that I'd totally missed the point. Forgotten English isn't a dictionary of obsolete words, it's a ramble through the hills of historical esoterica that the UK has to offer. It uses archaic English words as jumping off points for fascinating little insights into the peculiar customs, idioms, and idiosyncrasies that these islands once harboured. Like the entry for bee-master, which, we learn, was the name given to bee-keepers on estates. That's a cute name but not particularly interesting. (Although I have to admit that being “master of the bees” sounds way cooler than just being their keeper.) But from there we learn that the bee-master's duties weren't just tending to the hives, he also had to inform the bees of any deaths in the family, and help them go into mourning when such a death happened. Back in the day, when someone on the estate died even the bee hives wore black. Such fascinating trivia abound through the book, making it much more fun than your average dictionary. ( )

At first, I took umbrage with the title of this little book. Forgotten English suggests we'd be treated to a dictionary of sorts, full of archaic English words, long since fallen out of favour. And yet, early on, we're told about buggery and succubi and gammon and ambergris and hobnails. Sure, I probably wouldn't use all of those words in polite conversation, and definitely not in the same sentence, but forgotten? Not really.

I chalked this up to the book's American origins and figured it should be called Old Words from British English that are Mostly Forgotten in the UK and, Like, Definitely not Heard in the US. With that I was ready to polish off the book and get on with my new-found career of giving new, accurate titles to old works of literature.

But then I realised that I'd totally missed the point. Forgotten English isn't a dictionary of obsolete words, it's a ramble through the hills of historical esoterica that the UK has to offer. It uses archaic English words as jumping off points for fascinating little insights into the peculiar customs, idioms, and idiosyncrasies that these islands once harboured. Like the entry for bee-master, which, we learn, was the name given to bee-keepers on estates. That's a cute name but not particularly interesting. (Although I have to admit that being “master of the bees” sounds way cooler than just being their keeper.) But from there we learn that the bee-master's duties weren't just tending to the hives, he also had to inform the bees of any deaths in the family, and help them go into mourning when such a death happened. Back in the day, when someone on the estate died even the bee hives wore black. Such fascinating trivia abound through the book, making it much more fun than your average dictionary. ( )

Better book than "The Word Museum" as there is some documentation for most of the words including where published etc. ( )