one of the oldest written words in the english language still in usage

[Joshua Nimocks]

I'm sorry.  I should have specified: alder, 'the head of a family or
clan.'

-Joshua Nimocks


On Wed, 3 Mar 2004, Vida J Morkunas wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Vida J Morkunas <vidamorkunas at TELUS.NET>
> Subject:      Re: one of the oldest written words in the english language still
>               in              usage
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Hi Joshua,
>
> Alder = a tree of the genus Alnus; related to the birch
>
> Vida.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf Of
> Joshua Nimocks
> Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2004 1:56 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: one of the oldest written words in the english language still in
> usage
>
> Last May Allan, Metcalf sent out an email regarding WGN-TV news of
> Chicago's claim that town is the oldest word in the English language.
>
> Well, 'town' (601) does appear to tie 'priest' and 'yield' for the OED
> headwords, with the oldest citations, that are still in common usage.
>
> These three are beaten by chiule (550) and alder (600), which appear to
> have fallen out of usage in the 19th and 14th centuries, respectively.
>
> In case anyone wanted to know,
> Joshua Nimocks
>