rhizoverbBeta
DictionaryarchaismOld-fashioned feature
noun

archaism

AR-kee-i-zum/ˈɑːrkiɪzəm/

An old-fashioned feature of language or practice

The ancient temple-style entrance is an archaism on the modern glass building.

Show archaism through the stylistic branch of the frozen sense: an ancient temple-style entrance retained on an otherwise unmistakably modern glass building.
Etymology
archaGreekto copy the ancients
+ismGreekpractice or process

“Copying the ancients” underlies the earlier sense of retaining old or obsolete forms. Archaism then came to name an individual example of such retention: an old-fashioned word, expression, or stylistic feature.

In context

Schulich Law23:57
that is now little more than a cherished archaism of the kind so beloved of the British despite ourselves.
The 3rd Annual Innis Christie Symposium on Labour and Employment Law Keynote Lecture

More examples

  • The poem deliberately uses archaisms to evoke the past.
  • That legal phrase is a surviving archaism.
  • The novelist avoids unnecessary archaism in contemporary dialogue.

Forms

archaism · archaisms

Similar words

anachronism
Belongs to the wrong historical period, not merely an older usage.
obsolete expression
No longer current, whereas an archaism may survive deliberately.