Friday, March 28, 2014

Antique words

I got a word-a-day calendar for Christmas - Forgotten Words.   It's been a lot of fun - mostly words that are oddities, sounding strange and referring to times and situations we no longer need, unless writing or reading an historical novel.  Haven't had a use for Quintain or Gabriel's Hounds recently.

On the other hand, every now and then there's a word I want to bring back into fashion.  We need these words, we just don't know it.  Yesterday's word:  Afterwrath.

Afterwrath is that anger you feel post facto - something that slipped past at the time, but the more you think about it the madder you get.  You weren't mad on the spot - you were focused on something else, you were busy, but afterwards when you think about what happened?  you know you should have been mad, you would have been mad had you given it your attention at the time.  Now, you're suffering from afterwrath.  Afterwrath is almost worse than wrath, because just like that feeling of coming up with the correct retort five hours later in the middle of the night when you were dumbstruck at the time, I find it harder to deal with the wrath that comes from "what-ifs" than I do with actually dealing with a situation on the spot.

I have a need for this word - I dunno why it fell out of use, wasn't widespread and became forgotten, was isolated to a small portion of the world originally and never moved on elsewhere.  No internet with its Urban Dictionary in the late 1800s?  How many other cool words are there that exactly describe things we don't give specific labels to any more?  Do you suppose the Internet may preserve these words for us in future?

No comments: