There Is Such a Thing as Too "Educated"
English is a great language (yeah, we’re biased), but it wasn’t always so. In the 1500s, scholars coined hundreds of terms using Greek and Latin influences to help refine “barbarous” English.
These “educated” words were eventually considered too pretentious for common use. They were known as inkhorn terms because the ivory-tower wise men penned their fancy-pants words using ink stored in containers of animal horn. Let’s explore some of these superciliously silly inkhorn terms and be grateful they were fatalities of the English language.