Selcouth- Daily Word №5
Seldom? Selene? I think we should stop guessing
Today’s word is selcouth, which means unusual or unfamiliar. I could see shadows of the word seldom in there. It’s ‘couth’ ending is also a word in itself, literally meaning ‘familiar’.
Looking Deeper
selcouth has it’s first appearance in Old English, where it was spelt slightly differently, like this: seldcouth. It is made up of two parts, the seld part which meant ‘rarely’, and the couth part which, as mentioned above, can be used in place of ‘familiar’.
Today selcouth is completely gone from most modern literature, including several dictionaries too! It’s more common counterparts are ‘strange’ and ‘wondrous’.
Using ‘selcouth’ in a Sentence
selcouth is an obsolete adjective, which means it is used in concurrence with a noun just like any other regular adjective. Just replace ‘strange’ or ‘bizarre’ with this.
“The photos came from selcouth locations around the country, with craggy cliffs and rolling moors.”
This word might be a stretch to use. It is in a state of more disuse than any of the other ones I’ve mentioned before. But that’s why we do this right? We’re going to bring it back, one word at a time.
See ya!
I know I might not be much, but I hope to bring these words back to our use again. By sharing one word a day, maybe we still have a shot at saving them.
