The Oxford English Dictionary has 231,000 entries. It has been said that at least a fifth of them are obsolete. They range from “aa,” which is a stream or waterway (try that in Scrabble), to “zymome,” which is the part of gluten which is insoluble in alcohol. One other word which has apparently become obsolete is respair.
Among all the words which have fallen out of use, however, respair is worth reviving! As a noun, it means “the return of hope after a period of despair.” As a verb, it means “to have hope again.” Both of these uses are modeled after their “cousin” word despair, which has its roots in the Latin sperare, which means “to hope.”
Respair seems to fallen out of use since the 15th century, but we have chosen, for some reason, to hold on to despair. This pandemic year seems to be a perfect time to resurrect and revive respair. Although spellcheck may try to get in the way, use it in an email or a text today!
