The most dangerous words are the ones that you think you understand. This is a trap of old books, where familiar words often hold strange meanings. Sometimes it is not the word, but its definition, that becomes archaic; the definition is discarded, the word acquires new meaning and endures.
It is often possible, when words change meaning, to see the connecting ideas, or to see the definition growing more general or more specific. Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, written in the middle of the fifteenth century, contains an abundance of such changed words. In each following example, I will give the familiar word, the archaic definition, and a quotation demonstrating the old use. All quotations are from Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, Volume I, published by Penguin Classics in 1986; the archaic definition was usually given in the glossary or footnotes of that book. The editor modernized spelling and punctuation.
1. Maims, wounds. This is a word that has grown more specific, indicating now a certain type of injury rather than injury in general; note as well that it is used, by Malory, as a noun rather than a verb.
“When King Lot had espied King Bors, he knew him well, then he said, ‘O Jehu, defend us from death and horrible maims!’ “
2. Lightly, quickly. There is an obvious connection between (physical) lightness and swiftness of movement.
“Then the King of the Hundred Knights voided the horse lightly.”
3. Doubt, a fearful thing. There are two possible relations between the modern and archaic definitions. First, doubt breeds fear; second, doubt can itself be a thing to be feared or dreaded.
“Then they went to battle again so marvellously that doubt it was to hear of that battle.”
4. Bounty, excellence. Excellence is a bounty–an abundant amount–of some positive quality. This quotation (spoken by Merlin to King Arthur) is interesting for the idea expressed, too.
“A man of your bounty and noblesse should not be without a wife.”
5. Fault, lack. Even today, every fault is a lack of something, but it has a connotation of guilt, of commission rather than omission.
“I fault fifty [good knights], for so many have been slain in my day.”
6. Careful, mournful. Before its current use as a synonym for a worry, concern, or responsibility, care was a synonym for grief.
“And so he ascended up into that hill till he came to a great fire, and there he found a careful widow wringing her hands and making great sorrow, sitting by a grave new made.”
7. Warn, prevent. When we warn someone, it is to prevent something. The evolution of this word’s meaning is from prevent to attempt to prevent, in a specific way.
“I may not warn people to speak of me what it pleaseth them.”
8. Dissever, distinguish. To distinguish one thing from another is to understand that they are different—separate from each other, in some way. You are, intellectually, splitting them apart. Dissevering them.
“All men of worship may dissever a gentleman from a yeoman, and from a yeoman a villain.”
This final quotation offers a bonus lesson on the evolution of language. “A man of worship” is a man who has worship, in the old sense—honor or worth. Gentleman (man of gentle, or noble, birth), yeoman (freeholder beneath the nobility), and villain (a serf or peasant) are all used according to their original, class definition.
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