On words that need a comeback

You don't carry in your countenance a letter of recommendation. Charles Dickens

Jan: Everybody always writes about the overused words or phrases that irritate them. Lately, I've been collecting the underused ones that fell out of fashion. I'd like to see these make a comeback.

Countenance: The general impression given by the facial features. Kind of a mix of appearance and what today we might call aura. But it hints at intrepretation of the observer, rather than an energy emitted from the observed.

Fortnight: In Charles Dicken's and Jane Austen novels, everyone always goes away for a fortnight. What an economical way to say a two-week period. Why not use it? As in, I clean my house fortnightly!

Coupling: One of the nicest euphemisms for having sex, and a whole lot better than the much cruder term we overuse today. Wouldn't it be great if rappers converted to the use of Mothercoupler?

Singular: Big favorite of Somerset Maugham. I remember looking it up when I read one of his collections because he used it in pretty much every short story. The first definition is separate, individual, but Maugham used it to mean deviating strongly from the norm. Along the lines of extraordinary.

Physiognomy: -A favorite term of Sherlock Holmes if I remember correctly. It means judging human character from facial features, which fell out of favor for good reason. It was biased against anyone non-white or unattractive. But if you read Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink, you know that we still unconsciously assess people this way. So why not use the correct term for it -- if only to define it as a flawed human practice.

Strumpet: A much nicer way to say slut. It seems to imply a certain amount of flair --- or maybe musical ability.

Malarky: So much better to be full of than bologney or worse.
Come on, if you think about it, there are lots of these. We can force them into everyday conversation and make it a mission.

HALLIE: Oh, Jan, get thee to a library and check out H. L. Mencken's "The American Language" (1921). You and Mencken would have been soulmates. He was chronicling how American-English was diverging from English-English, and doing so with his own particular brand of wit.

In the book, you'll find a plethora(!) of colorful terms and their origins--like palooka, belly-laugh, and high-hat. And mourn colorful terms that have faded like infanticipating (expecting), shafts (legs), and Reno-vated (contemplating divorce).

JAN: Oh, I forgot about high-hat. I'm reading Millers Crossing, from the Coen brothers screenplay collection. The setting is Chicago during the prohibition years and the gangsters repeatedly use high-hat, as in "you were giving me the high hat." The uppity, condescending blow off.

RO: I love throwing in an underused word or expression every once in a while and watching the faces. Has she lost it? Is she that old? Hallie, I actually used Reno-vated yesterday! (Shades of the orginal Women, come-a ti-yi-yippee!)

Of the Damon Runyon-type words I like malarky and hooey, but really prefer the Brit-sounding (is it?) balderdash. I vote for strumpet or hussey over the all-too-popular slut. Even twelve year-olds are calling each other that.

Let's see...brouhaha...that's a good one...what else..I may need a cuppa joe first...

ROBERTA: yes, love brouhaha--I still use that one. and how about "rhubarb," as in "What a rhubarb!"

JAN: What a rhubarb? I never hard that before. Is that a Minnesota-ism, like Holy Buckets? And what is a rhubarb anyway? A jokester?

HANK: A rhubarb is a dustup, right? I like piffle. As in oh, piffle. And I just read about the word "wifty," which is like ditzy and fey. All three of those are lovely.

JAN: Piffle and wifty can double as excellent names for puppies and kittens.

It seems there are just so many useful words and slangs benched before their time. Please come tell us your favorites.