Archaic and Foreign Uses
- The word "silex" was previously used to refer to flint and chert and sometimes other hard rocks.
- In Latin "silex" originally referred to any hard rock, although now it often refers specifically to flint.
- In many Latin languages, "silex" or a similar word is used to refer to flint. Although the modern English word "silex" has the same etymology, its current meaning has changed. These are false friends.
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Famous quotes containing the words archaic and/or foreign:
“Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created. The average conservative is a slave to the most incidental and trivial part of his forefathers’ glory—to the archaic formula which happened to express their genius or the eighteenth-century contrivance by which for a time it was served.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“So the gentle poet’s name
To foreign parts is blown by fame;
Seek him in his native town,
He is hidden and unknown.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)