A fossil word is an obsolete word which remains in currency because it is contained within an idiom still in use.
It can also occur for phrases, such as in point ('relevant'), which is retained in the larger phrases case in point (also "case on point" in the legal context) and in point of fact but is not otherwise used outside of a legal context.
Read more about Fossil Word: English Language Examples
Famous quotes containing the words fossil and/or word:
“The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit,—not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Even the most honest writer lets slip a word too many when he wants to round off a period.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)