Ruth

[boxtops]

Just seen a crossword answer where ruth = pity. How come we hardly ever use the word "ruth", but we frequently say "ruthless"?

[FredPuli43]

Hardly ever? We never use 'ruth'. It's archaic. Though we do still use 'rue'. which is related to it.
We don't use 'feck' to mean 'effect','value' or 'worth' either ('What the feck?' is not an enquiry aboiut worth). We do use 'feckless' though.

There are other examples of words formed from roots which are now obsolete or archaic. An unusual one is unkempt, which meant 'uncombed'. 'Kempt' was the past participle of 'kemb' a dialect word meaning ' to comb', it wasn't used in regular English but unkempt has always been.

[baza]

isnt ruthless what happened after the storm of 1987.

[Quizmonster]

And there's reck, meaning to care about, which has also disappeared though we do still use reckless. What stays and what goes is all part of the rich pageant of our language, Boxy.

[FredPuli43]

And we do have archaic or obsolete words in some phrases: 'scot' in 'scot free', the lawyers' 'without let or hindrance','kith and kin' and so on. Don't think anyone apart from crossword compilers uses 'scot' for a tax, 'let' for impediment, or 'kith' for friends any more.

[Tilly2]

The word that sprang to my mind was 'uncouth'. We don't use couth,do we?

[NOX]

I think it depends who you are or where you are how much archaic language is used. Not very much at all is totally obsolete, and a quick scan down words that are supposed to be shows several that I use and even more that are or have been used by people I know. Certainly I use 'kith' in it's correct context, I also regularly use 'calumnies', ' gainsay', 'rile', I'll use ' Divvy tan' for a mental hospital as in ' You'll end up in the Divvy Tan if you carry on like that' and so forth. I think the use of allegedly redundant language is far more common in rural Ireland than certainly in England, but I hear a lot of words here that 'experts' would have you believe' aren't alive anymore- and if you go to the black country as well as their wonderful dialect they have a generally quaint turn of phrase with common English.

[FredPuli43]

Tan, nox? Divvy for a fool or stupid person is used as 'div' in the South; 'he's a bit of a div'; but what does 'tan' come from ? But the other words you list, save for 'kith' , are in general use in the South, maybe everywhere, and admittedly not by the whole population in regular vocabulary, but understood .

Thinking about it, some words which have lived in obscurity do get revived for general use: 'chav' is one, apparently being Romany for 'child', and once current in Kent, and 'bird' for a young woman may be one, being recorded with that meaning a long time ago and revived in the 1960s .

And some words appear like comets, coming into view for a short while, in linguistic terms, and then disappearing. My mother was surely not alone in using 'parney' for rain ("it's going to parney"), a word which seems to be a word for 'water' in an Indian language and which must have appeared in English during the Raj and then disappeared with the end of it. Doolally for 'mad', also with an Indian connection, has survived better, but is rare nowadays.

[NOX]

Tan is a house, you can also have ' don't want to stay long they've got a mukkadi tan'- grubby house. Doolally is another one I use a lot as well, and my ( now dead ) father in law used 'Doolally-tap' which I think is it's original form as well. I also use 'up to me oxters in shuck' meaning up to my armpits in sh1t for when I'm either doing something messy or even something I don't want to do. I'm quite prone to dialect and weirdness when I'm with family, though not very often outside of it ' cos nobody understands me. 'Parney' I've heard but never used myself, I think that's a London saying isn't it?

[Mosaic]

We talk about someone being gormless - never gormful.
Gorm = old norse for wise

...or even feckless.....

[Quizmonster]

Fred, 'let' for impediment is still in daily use in tennis when a service ball strikes the net-cord and then lands in court.

[heathfield]

I feel distinctly gruntled by some of these answers

[Zippolover]

Ruth is now considered a proper noun and is therefore not accepted in word games. It annoys me when that happens because ruthless is OK.

[mike11111]

Although some words still exist they have fallen into disuse where their antonyms have not. We may describe someone as uncouth but are unlikely to describe his opposite as couth.

[Sheenamf]

We use warmth but not coolth, yet this is a word which years ago came up on Call My Bluff. Still waiting for an occasion to use it as it sounds to gentle to describe recent weather