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Archaic English Quotes

Browse 5 quotes about Archaic English.

Archaic English Quotes

“Words should not be used merely because they are 'old' or obsolete. The words chosen, however remote they may be from colloquial speech or ephemeral suggestions, must be words that remain in literary use, especially in the use of verse, among educated people. (To such Beowulf was addressed, into whatever hands it may since have fallen.) They must need no gloss. The fact that a word was still used by Chaucer, or by Shakespeare, or even later, gives it no claim, if it has in our time perished from literary use.”

WritingWordsVocabularyLinguisticsTranslationArchaic EnglishWord Usage
Book:The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
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“The influenza has busted me a good deal; I have no spring; and am headachy. So as my good Red Lion Counter begged me for another Butcher's Boy--I turned me to- what thinkest 'ou--to Tushery, by the mass! Ay, friend, a whole tale of tushery. And every tusher tushes me so free, that may I be tushed if the whole thing is worth a tush. The Black Arrow: A Tale of Tunstall Forest is his name: tush! a poor thing!”

Archaic EnglishTushery
Author:Robert Louis Stevenson
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“Well, my wife was just lightin' a pig-tail - tho' light enough and to spare there was in the lift already - when who should come clatterin' at the latch-pin in the blow o' thunder and wind but Philip, poor lad himself; and an ill hour for him it was. He's been some time in ill fettle, though he was never frowsy, hot he, but always kind and dooce, and canty once, like anither; and he asked me to tak the boat across the lake at once to the clough o' cloostedd at t'other side. The woman took the pet and wodn''t hear o't; and "Dall me, if I go to-night,' quoth I. But he would not be put off so, not he; and dingdrive he went to it, cryin' and putrein' ye'd a-said, poor fellow, he was wrang i' his garrets a'most.”

Archaic English
Book:The Haunted Baronet
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