That which is or seems typical of the past can be mentioned as an archaism.
The Greek word archaïsmós came into late Latin as archaismus . That is the closest etymological antecedent of archaism , a concept that alludes to the condition of archaic : antiquated or ancient.
An archaism, therefore, is something that seems to belong to the past . It may be a consequence sought through imitation or an unwanted effect.
For example: “There are men who show their archaism in their treatment of women and who do not accept the changes in society,” “The archaism in the customs of this rural town is notorious and surprises visitors,” “For my generation “Talking on the phone is an archaism, we prefer to communicate through social networks or WhatsApp.”
Archaism as a linguistic element
Archaism, on the other hand, is called the linguistic element that, with respect to a time , is outdated due to its meaning and/or form . The use of this type of concepts is also called archaism.
Archaisms are usually words that are no longer used , even if they were frequent in other times . That is why its use at a given time is usually limited to a specialized or specific area.
Literature is the space that most lends itself to the use of archaisms without this being inappropriate, since through writing it is possible to make reference to any era in history , as well as publish recently discovered ancient works or even adapt them to the characteristics of the language, preserving the original version to study the changes.
Outside the academic field, on the other hand, it is not very common to encounter archaism. However, older people often cling to certain terms that were used in their youth, especially in towns and rural areas, and this represents a real treasure , vestiges of a portion of the language that will inevitably disappear. In this sense, we must emphasize that a term or expression that is out of use is not inferior to its modern equivalents, since its "quality" or effectiveness is not related to its validity .
Some examples
Take the case of “agora” . This notion meant “at this moment” , just as “now” does today. If these days a person says “now” instead of “now” , they resort to an archaism: “Now I'm going to the market and then I finish work” , “What are you doing now?” , “Come here now!” .
The same can be said about “beauty” , replaced by “beauty” : “That dress is beautiful” , “The landscapes of the area stand out for their beauty” , “My girl is beautiful” . In these two examples we notice that both the letter G and F were replaced by H , something that is not true in any case or position within archaic words, but which is very interesting.
The words that were once frequent and are no longer used today are archaisms: "beauty", "agora".
Archisms and the letter H
Although many people consider that the letter H is really useless in our language, since we do not pronounce it except in the conjunction CH (which could well be replaced by a new letter), there is a great complexity that prevents the academy from erasing it from our alphabet and look forward. First of all, we must not forget that for pairs such as one-hun or now-hour it is crucial to distinguish words whose meanings have no relation.
The H came to our language from Latin, and originally it was also pronounced aspirated, as if it were a soft J. At that time, in Spanish the F had a similar pronunciation , and it was for this reason that at the beginning of the 14th century many words that began with F began to be written with h .