Writers like words. I want to know where words come from, how they got their birth, where they might have died or gotten lost. Archaic words are mysteries and puzzles, and hint at times lost far back in the mist of history. Take, for example, the word kissing-crust, which specifies the part of a loaf's crust that gets stuck to the loaf next to it as it bakes in the oven. Most children today have never seen a kissing-crust.
If you share this interest in words, try to get your hands on a copy of A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs, and Ancient Customs, from the Fourteenth Century by James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, F.R.S. (printed in London by John Russell Smith in 1847, and recently reprinted by Gale Research Company of Detroit). Not easy to find, but try the site at bookfinder.com and see what you come up with.
You will discover lost words such as these:
scleezy (said of cloth, when the threads are irregular and uneven)
poddy (round and stout in the belly)
mercify (to pity)
quilkin (a frog)
panniers (to fill a woman's panniers, i.e. to get her with child)
widdles (very young ducks)
whantle (to fondle)
Have fun!
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