Obsolete and Archaic Terms
From Fresh Dictionary
| This Policy as yet has no real status. It is a DRAFT PROPOSAL only. Please see the discussions (if any) on the attached Talk page if you want to contribute to the development or adoption of this policy. Meantime, this probably fills some need. |
This is a policy truly in development. Thus this page includes many aspects of reasoning and discussion which may later be removed for conciseness.
This "policy" will be renamed, if necessary, as appropriate when the current debate resolves. It may well be renamed to something like "Inclusion and Classification of Old Words". Until then it will remain at this "page address".
Contents |
Policy for Inclusion of old words
- obsolete and archaic and unfashionable/dated terms and meanings are to be included in Wiktionary.
Whilst not in current use, people reading texts from an earlier era need to be able to refer to Wiktionary to find the meaning of any word in that text. This applies whether the term is peculiar to the court of Queen Elizabeth I, or to the punk scene of the 1980's.
This is, however, not a reason for including a word which was only ever in use in a very, very local group. There has to be some published use of the word, in a recognised publication.
Classifications of old words
Obsolete
No longer in use; found only in very old texts. Examples: zyxt, yclept
- Virtually no-one would currently use the word or meaning, and very very few would understand the word or meaning if it was used in speech or text.
Archaic
No longer in general use, but still found in some contemporary texts (eg, the Bible). Examples: thou (in the sense of "you"), Åconomy
- Generally understood by educated people, but rarely used in current texts or speech.
Unfashionable/Dated
Still in use, but generally only by older people, and considered unfashionable or superseded, particularly by younger people. Examples: wireless, groovy, gramophone, gay (in the senses of "bright", "happy", etc)
Old English
Ancient words, from before 1100 AD, that are so differently spelt from current spelling, or completely different in meaning, as to be virtually a foreign language to modern English speakers. These are to be treated as foreign words needing translation from the language of Old English, and not as English words at all, and thus not needing tagging as Archaic or Obsolete.
- What of Middle English words from between 1100 AD and 1550/1600 AD, when Modern English is considered to start.
Tagging words and meanings with "Archaic" or "Obsolete" or "Unfashionable"
- Template {{obsolete}} tags and categorises as (Obsolete)
- Template {{archaic}} tags and categorises as (Archaic)
- Template {{unfashionable}} tags and categorises as (Unfashionable)
As well as tagging words or meaning with "Archaic", "Obsolete" or "Unfashionable", it would be helpful to indicate the era in which the word fell to this classification of usage. eg: (archaic)-1920's, (unfashionable) - 1990's
References
- see the definitions in archaic and obsolete and Old English
- see the category definitions in category:Archaic, category:Obsolete
This policy and the category definitions should be aligned at least. And hopefully aligned with common dictionary usage of the terms "archaic" and "obsolete", to be reflected in the entries archaic and obsolete.
- as a dynamic new technology dictionary we will need to "invent" a meaning for "unfashionable" (or dated) that meets our needs. Previous technology dictionaries were less able to classify this kind of word, and thus may not have had a precise word/meaning to use for our purposes.