"That's a great deal to make one word mean," Alice said in a thoughtful tone. "When I make a word do a lot of work like that," said Humpty Dumpty, "I always pay it extra."

Saturday 10 October 2009

Desuetude

 
Desuetude is a state of inactivity or disuse; obsolescence (for example, the state of a custom that is no longer observed nor practised).

I guess a lot of the words I come up I with have reached a state of desuetude!
 

2 comments:

  1. That one was not in my bedside dictionary. (It might be in some of the others, I'm too lazy to check right now.) I suppose the word itself is an example of a word in desuetude (oh my, the spelling of that word is hard to memorize!)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, Dawn Treader - and it is hard to imagine the correct pronounciation as well. I think it is Deh-sweh-tewd.

    ReplyDelete