Fossil word

 ( Historical Linguistics ) 

A fossil word is a word that is broadly but remains in use due to its presence in an idiom or phrase. An example of a word is 'ado' in 'much ado'. An example of a phrase is (relevant), which is found in the phrases (or 'case on point' in the legal context) and '', but is rarely used outside of a legal context.

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English-language examples

• ado, as in "" or "" or "", although the homologous form "to-do" remains attested ("make a to-do", "a big to-do", etc.)
• amok, as in "run amok"
• asunder, as in "torn asunder"
• bandy, as in "" or ""
• bated, as in "", although the derived term "abate" remains in non-idiom-specific use
• beck, as in "", although the verb form "beckon" is still used in non-idiom-specific use
• betide, as in "woe betide you/us/them"
• bide, as in "bide your time"
• champing, as in "", where "champ" is an obsolete precursor to "chomp", in current use
• coign, as in ""
• deserts, as in "", although singular "desert" in the sense of "state of deserving" occurs in nonidiom-specific contexts including law and philosophy. "Dessert" is a French loanword, meaning "removing what has been served," and has only a distant etymological connection.
• dint, as in ""
• dudgeon, as in ""
• eke, as in ""
• fettle, as in "",Quinion, Michael. World Wide Words although the verb, 'to fettle', remains in specialized use in metal casting.
• fro, as in ""
• goodly, as in "goodly number"
• helter skelter, as in "scattered about the office", Middle English skelten to hasten
• inclement, as in "inclement weather”
• jetsam, as in "", except in legal contexts (especially admiralty, property, and international law)
• kith, as in "" Yahoo dictionary kith and kin
• lam, as in “on the lam”
• lo, as in ""
• loggerheads as in "" Phrase Finder at loggerheads or loggerhead turtle
• madding as in "far from the madding crowd"
• math, as in ""
• muchness as in ""
• ne'er, as in ""
• scot, as in ""
• sleight, as in ""
• shebang, as in "", although the word is now used as an unrelated common noun in programmers' jargon.
• shrive, preserved only in inflected forms occurring only as part of fixed phrases: 'shrift' in "" and 'shrove' in "Shrove Tuesday"
• span and spick, as in ""
• turpitude, as in ""
• vim, as in "", though preserved as the name of a scouring powder
  Adrian Room (1983). 9780710201744, Routledge. . ISBN 9780710201744
• wedlock, as in ""
• wend, as in "wend your way", although its former past tense "went" is still in use as the past tense of "to go"
• wreak, as in "wreak havoc"
• yore, as in "", usually "days of yore"

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"Born fossils" These words were formed from other languages, by elision, or by mincing of other fixed phrases.

• caboodle, as in "" (evolved from "kit and boodle", itself a fixed phrase borrowed as a unit from Dutch kitte en boedel)
• druthers, as in "" (formed by elision from "would rather" and never occurring outside this phrase to begin with)
• tarnation, as in "" (evolved in the context of fixed phrases formed by minced oath of previously fixed phrases that include the term "damnation")
• nother, as in "" (fixed phrase formed by rebracketing another as a nother, then inserting whole for emphasis; almost never occurs outside this phrase)

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See also

• Bound morpheme
• Collocation — tendency of one word to occur near another
• Cranberry morpheme — morpheme which has no independent meaning in a lexeme
• Fossilization (linguistics)
• Irreversible binomial

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