Have you ever tried to broaden your horizons by reading an old book, only to find yourself completely lost in its unfamiliar vocabulary? Through the ages, many words have dropped out of common use, or have become obsolete. Luckily for those of us interested in these words and their meanings, Stephen Chrisomalis has set up The Phrontistery (http://phrontistery.info/mission.html), which contains a compendium of lost words. This free online dictionary takes definitions from the OED and is perfect for those occasions when you really can’t guess what that word means from the context.

The Phrontistery’s International House of Logorrhea is also of interest to anyone wishing to expand their vocabulary with a few weird and wonderful words. My personal favourite, found on the site, is ‘leiotrichous,’ meaning simply ‘straight-haired,’ although I quite like ‘labiomancy’ too, because it makes ‘lip reading’ sound much more glamorous.

Although it would make communication more difficult if all of these words were re-introduced into everyday language, I think some of them genuinely deserve to be. Take ‘aeipathy’ for instance, which means a ‘continued passion; unyielding disease.’ I think we need a neat antonym for ‘apathy’ – sure, there are other more common words which do the trick just as well, but this one just sounds and looks better, doesn’t it? Also, as Stephen rightly points out in the entry for ‘widdershins,’ we might just need some of these words again. For example when technology makes analogue clocks obsolete, ‘clockwise’ and ‘anticlockwise’ will become obsolete with them, meaning that ‘deasil’ and ‘widdershins’ may come back into fashion.

So, what are your favourite obsolete or infrequently-used words in your language, and what do they mean?