they don't make words like they used to (revival)

[Laurence Horn]

At 2:57 PM -0400 10/16/06, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
>LUSTRUM appears to be a common enough word that it appears in the New Oxford
>American Dictionary, edition 2. I didn't check the usual online dictionaries.

OK, since that anonymous ignoramus quote below Bill's and Joel's
postings was me, I should indicate that I wasn't questioning the
existence of the word in question, just indicating my surprise that
there could be such a word I had manage to survive 60+years without
encountering.  In fact, it seems to be relatively rare in use, but
obviously not unheard of; what I find particularly interesting is
that the every-5-year ancient Roman ritual purification it alludes to
is semi-preserved along two different lines:  the "lustrum"
conference and its kin, which preserves the five-year period feature
while losing the ritual purification component, and the notion of
"lustration", which retains the ritual purification (in particular,
applied to the purging by law in post-iron curtain governments in the
former Eastern Bloc nations of officials who served in the earlier
regime) while losing the five-year period component.

No doubt everyone else on *our* list has occasion to refer to lustra
every day (or at least every five years), but as noted it was a new
one on me, and I was guessing it was equally unfamiliar to most other
Linguist List subscribers.

LH

>In a message dated 9/18/06 12:11:59 PM, Berson at ATT.NET writes:
>
>
>>  At 9/18/2006 11:46 AM, Bill Mullins wrote:
>>  >I watched most of "Rooster Cogburn" over the weekend.  In it, John
>>  >Wayne's character is being forcibly retired for reasons of age and
>>  >decrepitude.  He maintains that he is good for another "lustrum",
>>  >however.
>>
>>  Did you happen to catch which university Rooster attended?  Or
>>  whether earlier he had been detached by his unit to attend and learn
>>  Latin?  Or was it on an ROTC scholarship?
>>
>>  Joel
>>
>>  > >
>>  > > Just got this notice on Linguist List, which led me to wonder...
>>  > >
>>  > > >
>>  > > >This lustrum workshop offers a forum of discussion between
>>  > > researchers
>>  > > >from different fields of writing research (theoretical linguistics,
>>  > > >psycholinguistics, computational linguistics or language education),
>>  > > >from different countries and working on different languages.
>>  > >
>>  > > ...what exactly a lustrum workshop was.  I was pretty sure
>>  > > I'd never knowingly encountered a lustrum before, and had no
>>  > > conception of what it might be.  Anyone else know?  I may
>>  > > have lived a sheltered (not to say benighted) life, but I was
>>  > > somewhat surprised to come across this announcement with its
>>  > > apparent presupposition that the reader would immediately
>>  > > recognize that a "lustrum workshop" obviously refers to...
>>  > >
>>  >
>>  >------------------------------------------------------------
>>  >The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>>  ------------------------------------------------------------
>>  The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org