The word-stock of a language is in an increasing state
of change. Words change their meaning and sometimes drop out of the language
altogether. New words spring up and replace the old ones. Some words stay in
the language a very long time and do not lose their faculty of gaining new
meanings and becoming richer and richer polysemantically. Other words live but
a short time and are like bubbles on the surface of water — they disappear
leaving no trace of their existence. In registering these processes the role of
dictionaries can hardly be over-estimated. Dictionaries serve to retain this or
that word in a language either as a relic of ancient times, where it lived and
circulated, or as a still living unit of the system, though it may have lost
some of its meanings. They may also preserve certain nonce-creations, which
were never intended for general use. In every period in the development of a
literary language one can find words which will show more or less apparent
changes in their meaning or usage, from full vigour, through a moribund state,
to death, i. e. complete disappearance of the unit from the language.
Usually we do not notice the change that takes place
during our own time because it happens quite slowly. But if we take a look back
over a considerable span of time, language change becomes more obvious. If we
touch the problem of historical development we can not pass over in silence
peculiarities of early English language, and comparison between initial and
today’s English. Such line of investigation considers diachronic approach to
the main question of this course work – archaisms in literature. It’s very
important to reveal the notion of archaism, the sphere of usage, origin and
many other essential components that are comprised by the word "Archaism”.
Besides the direct investigation of archaisms I included information about
neologisms, as contrary notion, and also about retronyms.
All the aspects stated above will be carefully
investigated in this work; moreover there will be included olden text with and
analysis of poetry.
gemi 
mirona 