Archaism

Archaism
The literary use of words and expressions that have become obsolete in the common speech of an era. Spenser in The Faerie Queene (1590-96)deliberately employed archaisms (many of them derived from Chaucer's medieval English) in the attempt to achieve a poetic style appropriate to his revival of the medieval chivalric romance. The translators of the King JamesVersion of the Bible (1611) gave weight, dignity, and sonority to their prose by archaic revivals. Both Spenser and the King James Bible have in their turn been major sources of archaisms in Milton and many later authors. When Keats, for example, in his ode (1820) described the Grecian urn as "with hrede I Of marble men and maidens overwrought, " he used archaic words for "braid"
and "worked [that is, ornamented] all over." Abraham Lincoln achieved
solemnity by biblical archaisms in his "Gettysburg Address," which begins, "Fourscore and seven years ago." Archaism has been a standard resort for poetic diction. Through the nineteenth century, for example many poets continued to use "I ween," "methought," "steed," "taper" (for candle), and "morn,"
but only in their verses, not their everyday speech.