Obsolescence defined.
Obsolescence in this connexion must be understood only of common educated speech, that is, the average speaker's vocabulary. Obsolescent words are old words which, when heard in talk, will sound literary or unusual: in literature they can seem at home, and will often give freshness without affectation; indeed, any word that has an honourable place in Shakespeare or the Bible can never quite die, and may perhaps some day recover its old vitality.
Evidence of obsolescence.
The best evidence of the obsolescence of any word is that it should still be frequently heard in some proverb or phrase, but never out of it. The homophonic condition is like that of aural and oral, of which it is impossible to make practical use.[14] We speak of an aural surgeon and of oral teaching, but out of such combinations the words have no sense. It happens that oral teaching must be aural on the pupil's side, but that only adds to the confusion.
In deciding whether any obsolete homophone has been lost by its homophony, I should make much of the consideration whether the word had supplied a real need, by naming a conception that no other word so fitly represented; hence its survival in a proverb is of special value, because the words of proverbs are both apt and popular; so that for the disuse of such a word there would seem to be no other cause so likely and sufficient as damage to its signification.
The glossary is relied on to contain, besides its other items, all the obsolete words: the homophones separated out from these will show various grades of obsolescence, and very different values as examples bearing on the question at issue.
Table of homophones taken from among the obsolete words in Cunliffe's 'A New Shakespearean Dictionary,' Blackie, 1910.
ancient: replaced by ensign.
bate = remit.
beck = a bow of the head: preserved in 'becks and nods', mutual loss with beck = rivulet.
boot = to profit: Sh. puns on it, showing that its absurdity was recognized.
bottle (of hay): preserved in proverb.
bourne = streamlet: preserved in sense of limit by the line of Sh. which perhaps destroyed it.
breeze = gadfly.
brief (subs.): now only as a lawyer's brief.
brook (verb).
buck = to steep (linen) in lye.
cote: as in sheepcote.
dole = portion, and dole = sorrow: probably active mutual destruction; we still retain 'to dole out'.
dout.
dun (adj.): now only in combination as dun-coloured.
ear = to plough.
fain and feign: prob. mutual loss due to undefined sense of fain. n.b. fane also obsolete.
feat (adj.) and featly: well lost.
fere.
fit = section of a poem.
flaw: now confined to a flaw in metal, &c.
fleet (verb) and fleeting, as in the sun-dial motto, 'Time like this shade doth fleet and fade.'
foil: common verb, obsolete.
gest: lost in jest.
gird = to scoff: an old well-established word.
gout = a drop of liquor.
gust = taste (well lost).
hale = haul (well lost).
hight = named.
hoar: only kept in combination, hoar-frost, hoar hairs.
hose: lost, though hosier remains, but specialized in garden-hose, &c.
hue: not now used of colour.
imbrued (with blood): prob. lost in brewed.
jade: almost confined to jaded(?).
keel = cool.
list: as in 'as you list'.
mail: now only in combination, coat of mail, &c.
marry!
mated = confused in mind (well lost).
meed: lost in mead = meadow (also obs.) and mead=metheglin.
mete and metely = fitting, also mete in 'mete it out', both lost in meet and meat.
mere (subs.).
mouse (verb): to bite and tear.
mow = a grimace.
muse = to wonder: lost in amuse and Muse.
neat = ox.
ounce = pard.
pall = to fail.
peak: survives only in 'peak and pine' and in peaky.
pelting = paltry, also pelt = a skin, lost.
pill = to plunder.
pink = ornamental slashing of dress.
poke = pocket.
poll = to cut the hair.
quarry (as used in sport).
quean = a woman.
rack (of clouds).
raze (to the ground). The meaning being the very opposite of raise, the word raze is intolerable.
rede = counsel, n.b. change of meaning.
rheum: survives in rheumatic, &c.
scald = scurvy (adj.).
sleave = a skein of silk, 'The ravelled sleave of care', usually misinterpreted, the equivocal alternative making excellent sense.
souse (verb): of a bird of prey swooping.
speed: as in 'St. Francis be thy speed' = help, aid.
stale = bait or decoy (well lost).
tarre: to 'tarre a dog on' = incite.
tickle = unstable.
tire = to dress (the hair, &c.).
vail = to let fall.
wreak.
Besides the above may be noted
wont (sub.): lost in won't = will not.
fair: Though we still speak of 'a fair complexion' the word has lost much of its old use: and the verb to fare has suffered; we still say 'Farewell', but scarcely 'he fares ill'; also to fare forth is obsolete.
bolt = to sift, has gone out, also bolt in the sense of a missile weapon; but the weapon may have gone first; we still preserve it in 'a bolt from the blue', a thunder-bolt, and 'a fool's bolt is soon shot', and we shoot the bolt of a door.
barm: this being the name of an object which would be familiar only to brewers and bakers, probably suffered from the discontinuance of family brewing and baking. It would no longer be familiar, and may possibly have felt the blurring effect of the ill-defined balm, which word also seems rarely used. In the South of England few persons now know what barm is.
arch: adj., probably obsolescent.