Talk:eleëmosynary

Archaic spelling

I haven't found any bgc citations using this spelling among the 20 I have run searches on in the past 100 years. It is tedious searching because bgc doesn't discriminate the spellings. There might be some, but it would be nice to have some evidence of current use, especially in edited works. DCDuring TALK 21:07, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, Google Book Search is a pain when it comes to diacritics (which are often ignored) and ligatures (which are often split: (deprecated template usage) æ → (deprecated template usage) ae; (deprecated template usage) œ → (deprecated template usage) oe) in English. I don’t think we can call this {{archaic}}, but I’ll concede that it’s somewhat {{rare}}; two citations from the twenty-first century out of five in total contest its archaism, even if the UseNet uses could be regarded as a tad pædantic or jocular. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 23:02, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

As I understand it, something could be archaic and still be used, possibly fairly frequently, by those who like the flavor it adds to their writings. It is most common in period fiction, but antiquarianism probably has a home, for example, among fans of words. This might be both rare and archaic. DCDuring TALK 23:22, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Then it would apply to the lexème eleemosynary, irrespective of the spelling. Eleëmosynary is not like olde or magyck — the diæresis may connote pædantry, but not nostalgic archaism. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 00:08, 30 September 2008 (UTC)