'albeit'

[Steve Gustafson]

Brian M. Scott wrote:

> I'm 53, and I've been using it all my life.  It's true that I originally
> acquired it from reading and pronounced it to myself as 'all-bite', but I
> straightened that out before I was 12.  I've always considered it a
> perfectly normal word in a formal register, both in writing and in
> speech.

The revival of "albeit" is less peculiar than the even stranger revival of
"anent," which says nothing that "about" doesn't cover.  I first thought it
was an archaism used as a joke, but it seems to have crept back into
apparently serious contexts, and now is more common than I suspect it ever
was in the past.