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Unread 12-09-2020, 06:19 AM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: New York
Posts: 16,476
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I incorporated a bunch of "real" words that are likely to be unfamiliar to anyone these days when I translated a poem by Baltasar de Alcázar. The original Spanish did a riff on ancient and obsolete words in Spanish (and these were obsolete already back in 1600), and so I chose in my translation to dig up an old dictionary of ancient and obsolete words in English as well. Some of these are so obsolete they are no longer in dictionaries from the past century. In either the Spanish or the English, the words are "real" but not meant to be understood by the reader. Here's the relevant piece of the poem:

You see, the fact that I’m advanced
in years means often I
write prose in ancient words I learned
in days and times gone by.

Words like eftsoons, whoreson, lief,
cocklebread, piscarius,
fuxol, cockloft, cockmate, cronge,
peever, vaginarius.

Diffibulate or galantine,
quister, drenge, rotarious,
brightsmith, brownsmith, burgonmaster,
currydow, pannarius.

Hostler, mayhap, emerods,
swoopstake, usward, thole,
hawker, maugre, hatcheler,
fletcher, rantipole.


(The rest of my translation is here).
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