In Defense of Archaisms

Archaisms renew the language; they are the means by which language is renovated and restored to its original splendor. It is the old things that make all things new.

The “coming peril” was not Bolshevism, G.K. Chesterton said in 1927, only ten years after the Bolshevik Revolution, it was “standardization by a low standard.” For Chesterton, ever the prophet, the surest way of destroying a utopia was to try to put it into practice. He knew that communism could never be anything but a tyranny and that its monstrous flaws would become evident once it had the power to expose its inherent wickedness. A far greater peril was to be found in the rise of “vulgarity,” the dumbing-down of everything to a lowest common denominator of mindless mediocrity. Today, almost a century later, we have seen the “coming peril” come to pass in every area of culture.

One of the most pernicious and culturally deadly manifestations of the peril of standardized vulgarity is in the use of language. We forget that words are never merely words but are the means by which we make sense of things. If we have fewer words we have fewer tools with which to think and with which to reason. We are left not merely speechless in the presence of reality but thoughtless. This is why our Anglo-Saxon ancestors were wise when they spoke of each person’s “word-horde.” The more words we possess in our personal “horde” the wealthier and healthier we will be. The knowledge of each word is something which personally enriches the one who possesses it. Words empower us, whereas the absence of words impoverishes us and leaves us powerless to make sense of who we are and where we fit into reality. They are the means of exchange with which we express an understanding of ourselves and the cosmos to ourselves and to others. Without such a means of exchange we isolate ourselves from reality and alienate ourselves from others. We are left bemused and confused in the presence of things that we have no way of understanding because we have no way of expressing what they are to ourselves and others.

Since each word we learn adds to the wealth of our horde, it is important for all of us to always be adding more words to our treasure chest of meaning. And this is why we should rejoice whenever we see an archaism in an essay or a book that we’re reading, or in a poem. Read More

One of my delights has been the learning of new words in the English language, adding to my own personal hoard of words. Since I have moved to western Kentucky and even before I became a student of the local university, I have become increasingly aware of the impoverishment of American English. Students are not only graduating from high school with impoverished vocabularies but also from the university. They are stymied by words which I took for granted were a part of the English language. Most students particularly the foreign exchange students struggle with the language of William Shakespeare's poetry and plays. The American students are uninterested in learning it, the exception being a few English majors and drama students. One of the university's professors who teaches creative writing insists that his students only write in the everyday language that they speak. The handwriting is on the wall for churches that use the 1928 Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible. While I agree with the central premise of this article, churches that see their continued use of a worship language that is no longer the vernacular out of the belief that they are contributing to the enrichment of the English language in North America may be deluding themselves. If a student attends one of their churches and does not understand the language that they are using in their worship, the student is not going to take the time to learn it. The student will attend a church where he or she does understand the language used in worship. A small but growing number of Continuing Anglican clergy are coming to this realization. The challenge is how do we go about making the language of our worship intelligible to the younger generations without lowering the level of difficulty and the intellectual content of the language to the lowest common denominator.