archaism

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As Archaismus ( latinisiert from ancient Greek ἀρχαῖος archaios "alt", "former") is in the Lexikologie means a word, decreases the frequency of use and which is perceived by the speakers of a language community as old fashioned. Archaisms are still used by some (especially older) speakers and are familiar to many speakers, they are part of their passive vocabulary .

Lost words are lexical units that have completely disappeared from the vocabulary of contemporary language or only continue to exist in a few frozen phrases (e.g. Kegel for “illegitimate child”, now only used in the phrase “with child and cone ”).

In rhetoric , archaism describes the conscious use of ancient words or phrases. The conscious use of archaic words can have stylistic or ideological reasons.

Causes of Word Disappearance

The obsolescence and eventual disappearance of a word can have the following reasons:

  1. Language-internal reasons. The word is replaced by another, more modern-sounding word, which describes the same object or the same state of affairs ( sintemal → because; uncle → uncle); Displacement through homonymy: Connections with “after” (behind, after), such as after speech , anus replacement, after birth and many others, were avoided because of homonymy to anus (anus).
  2. External reasons. The object that this word describes disappears from our everyday world ( feudal lord , punch card , lure , fried potato ratio ). These words are also called historicisms . They must, for example, always be used when the subject matter designated by the word is to be spoken or written about.

For many archaisms, no precise reason for their disappearance can be given.

The obsolescence can be both a word as a whole concern (example: Barbier → hairdresser ) or only one meaning of the word or only a certain aspect: the spelling ( Roulleau → Rollo ), flexion ( schnöbe → snorted ), etc.

Some archaisms survive longer in dialects or in the standard German of a certain country (e.g. Velo in Switzerland). Therefore, the classification of a word as archaism also depends on the language variety that is being considered.

Lexicographical treatment

Archaisms are marked as obsolete or obsolete in dictionaries that codify the vocabulary of a language in its current usage . These are candidates for deletion in future editions of the dictionary. They are repeatedly included in dictionaries in order to preserve and develop skills for the reception of earlier texts. With Osman, 2003 (see below literature, for the first time 1971), there is a special dictionary of this pragmatically marked lemma type for German.

Pragmatic value

The pragmatic or rhetorical value of using archaisms in a contemporary linguistic context lies in creating a certain timbre (e.g. in literary works) or in characterizing a person through their way of speaking.

literature

  • Nabil Osman (ed.): Small lexicon of vanished words. Word extinction since the end of the 18th century. 13th, unchanged edition, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-45997-8 .
  • Oskar Reichmann: Dictionaries of archaic and lost words. In: Hausmann, Reichmann, Wiegand, Zgusta (eds.): Dictionaries. Dictionaries. Dictionnaires. An international handbook on lexicography. Part 2, de Gruyter, Berlin 1990, pp. 1153-1158
  • Bodo Mrozek : Lexicon of threatened words. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2005, ISBN 3-499-62077-4 .

Web links

Wiktionary: Archaism  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations