Information Research Weblog

Words fall out of use all the time - partly a matter of fashion, partly, perhaps, because the sound is difficult or the etymology not obvious. My thoughts on this were occasioned by the discovery in Trollope's, The Belton Estate, of the word "ambage" meaning a roundabout way of doing something or saying something, a circumloctution. On the basis of its meaning, 'ambage' seems worth restoring to use, it seems to me, so I'm forming the Society for the Restoration of Useful Archaic Words, members of which pledge themselves to use words agreed by the Society as useful, as often as appropriate in their speech and writing. You will notice that I am direct in my language, no ambage here!