Frankenstein’s monster, zombies, and Jason? There’s something fascinating and horrifying about things coming back from the dead. It’s spooky and weird and—admit it—kind of awesome.
We don’t have any reanimated monsters here at Dictionary.com. But, we do have plenty of words in our linguistic graveyard. We can’t help but be captivated by these old, “dead” words. These are properly called archaisms or archaic words. Archaic words (or forms) are “commonly used in an earlier time but rare in present-day usage except to suggest the older time, as in religious rituals or historical novels.”
We’ve decided to brush off our spell books, heat up old cauldrons, and try to bring some of these ghosts back to life. Hopefully, we have some eye of newt and toe of frog left in our stores …