eftsoonery
eftsoonery noun: the use of extremely obscure and archaic language.
Noun
eftsoonery (countable and uncountable, plural eftsooneries)
- The use of extremely obscure and archaic language.
- To the comic and the colloquial of Chaucer's art Mr. Krapp does full justice. Having undertaken to modernize Chaucer, he avoids the affectation of archaic words; he has no "eftsoonery." Some of his phrases are very modern indeed.1933 October 21, Robert Kilburn Root, “Chaucer Modernized”, in Henry Seidel Canby, editor, The Saturday Review of Literature, volume X, number 14, New York, N.Y.: Saturday Review Associates, →ISSN...
- Finally, Dr. O'Hare, formerly the tender interest of Nurse Callan, is said (p. 379) to have "died in Mona island through bellycrab three year agone come Childermas." The passage is so full of eftsooneries that "bellycrab" could easily pass as a picturesque antiquarian detail; but an early version...1962, Robert M[artin] Adams, Surface and Symbol: The Consistency of James Joyce's Ulysses, New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, page 201
Forms of eftsoonery
| plural | eftsooneries |
|---|
Origin of eftsoonery
From eftsoon (or eftsoons) + -ery. Eftsoon, an archaic term meaning "once again" or "soon after", is itself an example of eftsoonery.
Questions about eftsoonery
- What does eftsoonery mean?
- Eftsoonery means the use of extremely obscure and archaic language.
- What part of speech is eftsoonery?
- Eftsoonery is a noun.
- What is the plural of eftsoonery?
- The plural of eftsoonery is eftsooneries.
Words near eftsoonery in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: eftsoonery (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “eftsoonery.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/eftsoonery. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.