Everything Old Is New Again

“Hear ye, hear ye!” Does this phrase make you think of the town criers of yore, or perhaps the fanfare of a medieval trumpet? Or does “Let us away!” make you feel like turning on your heels with the flourish of your cloak and retreating on a horse-drawn carriage? These phrases are part of the set of imitative antique features that are both familiar and foreign: we 21st-century speakers recognize and utter them, and yet they are unmistakably old-timey and used for deliberate effect. It’s a bit ironic that these forms, while distinctively archaic, are in fact part of our living language. This Language Matters article will shine a light on what sorts of words and grammatical features have been woven into the tapestry of our modern take on the English of the past.

Through a Glass, Darkly

What is the historical period we are harkening back to when we affect archaic speech? Barring painstaking recreations of historically accurate language, which are few and far between, the archaic-sounding idiom that we create today often mixes features from various centuries between Old English and Modern English.¹ This idiom references the medieval Middle English typical of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (14th century) as well as the Early Modern English of Elizabethan England that Shakespeare inhabited (16th century) and of Jacobean England, when the King James Bible (1611) was written. Its range can even extend to the Restoration era of diarist Samuel Pepys (late 17th century), at the cusp of Modern English. Here are some examples of writing from that time range.

With lokkes crulle as they were leyd in presse.
“With locks curled as if they’d been laid in a hair curler.”

Canterbury Tales, General Prologue, Verse 81 (late 14th century)

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May

Opening lines from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 (1609)

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life […]

King James Bible, John 5:24 (1611)

In contrast to these highly stylized texts, Pepys’ diary offers a window into intimate, candid writing.

At my office late writing letters till ready to drop down asleep with my late sitting up of late, and running up and down a-days. So to bed.

The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday, 1 April 1665

The meme-ified Bayeux Tapestry is a good illustration of our vague understanding of the era connected with this pseudo-dialect. This 224-foot tapestry from the 11th century depicts the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, and in recent years its image has served as a popular background for memes that employ archaic twists on modern phrases, such as “Dost thou even hoist?” (This is a play on the phrase “Do you even lift?”, a way of questioning someone’s weightlifting expertise.)²³ But the tapestry’s subjects, and its weavers, would have never uttered phrases of that style, because they would have spoken Late Old English, which is far less intelligible to us modern readers:

Þa com Wyllelm eorl of Normandige into “Then came William earl of Normandy into Pevensey”

From The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (circa 9th century)⁴

Because of their inauthentic nature, these antique-sounding words and phrasings are aptly termed pseudo-archaisms or mock-archaisms. They nod to an imagined, amorphous past that falters in its accuracy, but shines in its entertaining, atmospheric or humorous quality. For example, comedian Bill Bailey delivers a well-received “three men walk into a bar” joke that is meant to satirize Chaucerian English (14th century), and it begins thus (the spelling approximates the comedian’s exaggerated delivery):

Three fellows wenten into a pubbe.
And gleefully their hands did rubbe.
In expectacyon of revelrie.
For it was the hour known as happye.

His verses incongruously link the past and present to humorous effect. The passage contains several antique features. There is an archaic past tense inflection in wenten. The use of did in the affirmative construction did rubbe is characteristically old: in Modern English, the auxiliary do is only used to emphasize affirmative statements. Additionally, the word order sometimes changes compared to what is natural in Modern English. For example, the hour known as happye adds to the stilted, solemn air, which contrasts humorously with the casual sentiment of happy hours. Spellings with extra letters and silent e’s can be heard in his stylized pronunciation of certain words (“pub-buh”)—spellings were not standardized until later, as discussed in our article Spelling Across the Atlantic. Lastly, word choices such as old-fashioned fellow and formal revelry round out the quaint atmosphere.

Today, archaic-inspired English can be found in films, TV shows and historical fiction.

We need all these horses shod thusly?

From the Crusader film Kingdom of Heaven (2005)

Often, only a few archaic words are added to an otherwise modern script, which serve as signposts for the world of the story without distracting a modern audience. In the 2021 film The Last Duel, that world is France in 1386. While most of the film uses Modern English, albeit with formal features, it sets the medieval scene at the very beginning of the film with these lines:

Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye! Lords! Nights! Squires! And all other manner of people.

You may also hear archaic-sounding English at Renaissance fairs. Many of these festivals offer guidelines on using personal pronouns like thee and thy and other ways to give your speech a Renaissance flavour.

The Linguistic Equivalent of Pantaloons and Petticoats

If you’d like to dress up your speech in mock archaic features, here is a sampling of antique-coded linguistic choices. The differences in grammar, lexicon and meaning at various stages of English could span the length of the Bayeux Tapestry and then some, so we present here just a few of the more common examples.

Fear Not the Grammar Archaic

Word Order

In older versions of English, word order was more flexible. Early Modern English could use verb-subject-object (Say you what?) or object-verb-subject (What say you?). In Modern English, by contrast, word order has solidified to subject-verb-object (You said what?) or object-subject-verb with an auxiliary (What did you say?).

Further, do was not required in negations like it is today, so Fear not could be found where we would say Do not fear today. This older syntax is preserved in the phrase I kid you not and in the proverb Waste not, want not. In Modern English, a phenomenon known as do-support makes it so that negated sentences must use the auxiliary do unless there is another auxiliary or modal, as in I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Conjugations

Old and Middle English had systems for verb conjugation that included, notably, the ‑eth suffix for the third-person singular present indicative (She knoweth) and ‑est for the second-person singular present and past indicative (Thou goest). These endings are often misused in mock archaisms, for example, by placing them on infinitive verbs, as found in this promotional material for a play employing satirical archaisms:

The Taming of the Breakfast Club is a mash-up of 80s-cult classic films and faux Elizabethan language; about which the Bard woulds’t undoubtedly state: “Doth thou wanteth me to puke?”

Our Erstwhile Wordhoard

There are countless words and expressions with an archaic flair. Some examples include the following:

• anon “soon” 
• ere “before (a time)”
• forsooth “in truth”
• mayhap “maybe”

Mayhaps minor amounts of tomfoolery are to be expected

Example of mock-archaism in a Reddit forum

• methinks “I think”

The lady doth protest too much, methinks

Famous line in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, used in everyday speech to suggest that someone’s vigorous denial may indicate their guilt

• O, ye of little faith “a way to refer to a person who doubts another’s ability”
• prithee “please”
• steed “a horse for riding”
• vouchsafe “to tell or give, often in a condescending manner”

Old patterns can inspire new forms. One slang darling of recent years is an adjective popularized by a flustered YouTuber in 2017 when she dramatically intoned, “I am shooketh.”⁵

Thus the Tale Be Told

Mock-archaisms are one of many ways we play with English; they add whimsy, drama, and echoes of epic and chivalry. These linguistic blasts from the past remind us that, perchance, everything old is new again.

This article was concocted by

Antidote’s linguists