This may fall under purple prose, but there's something about lush, descriptive, even archaic words that's just beautiful in my opinion, and there's a real joy to expanding your vocabulary as a writer.

• Puissant - powerful, mighty, potent

• Dervish - a member of any of various Muslim ascetic orders, as the Sufis, some of which carry on ecstatic observances, such as energetic dancing and whirling or vociferous chanting or shouting.

• Brume - mist or fog

• Scry - to look ahead

• Lambent - glowing, gleaming, or flickering with soft radiance

• Inchoate - rudimentary, not fully begun or fully formed

• Cyclopean - a type of ancient masonry made with massive, irregular blocks

• Garrulous - excessively talkative

• Phasmid - a stickbug

• Scintillating - sparkling or shining brightly

• Alienage - the legal status of an alien

• Pelagic - living near, or in, the ocean

• Onager - a mule/siege weapon

• Barding - horse armor

• Grimalkin - a cat, or spiteful old woman

• Simony - the buying/selling of religious relics

• Remembrancer - a person who reminds someone of something; an officer of the corporation of the City of London

• Livery - a distinctive badge worn by a noble's retainers in war

• Inquest - a legal inquiry, especially an investigation by a coroner into cause of death

• Oxgang - a measure of land; the area a single ox can plough in a given season (approx. 15 acres)

• Esoteric - something foreign and exotic

• Eviscerate - messily torn apart

• Naptha - Greek fire

• Defenestration - being thrown from a window

• Candlemas - a church festival in honor of the presentation of the infant Jesus in the Temple and the purification of the Virgin Mary: candles are blessed on this day.

• Anathema - a person or thing detested or loathed:

• Literati - intellectuals

• Apocrypha

EDIT

• Amorphous - without a clearly defined shape or form

• Charnel - building or chamber where human remains are deposited

• Gibbous - convex or protuberant

• Tenebrous - dark, shadowy, obscure

• Basalt - a dark, fine-grained volcanic rock

• Cattymount - short for cat-a-mountain, a mountain lion

• Corpulent - obese

• Dissemble - hide under a false appearance

• Fete - a large and lavish party

• Footpad - thieves who rob pedestrians; muggers

• Gossamer - something light, delicate, and insubstantial

• Ichor - fluid that flows like blood in the veins of gods

• Laconic - using an economy of speech - concise to the point of rudeness or mystery

• Moiety - one of two equal parts; half of something

• Nitre - saltpeter

• Ossified - turned into bone

• Outre - bizzare; violating convention or propriety

• Phrenology - pseudoscience - belief that study of the contours of the skull reveals human intelligence and character

• Pæan - a joyous song or hymn of thanksgiving and triumph

• Reverie - daydreaming; being lost in thought

• Syncope - fainting

• Tapers - a slender candle

• Vespers - evening prayer

• Virtuoso - one skilled in the fine arts

• Furioso - adj; furious or wild direction in music

• Nightsoil - human waste

• Larcenous - having a disposition to steal

• Harridan - a strict, bossy, beligerent old woman

• Rakish - fashionable

• Pittance - inadequate payment

This may be only tangentially related to etymology, but hopefully it's of interest to the rest of you on this sub.

I was listening to "One Bourbon, One Scotch, and One Beer" by George Thorogood, and in the intro he tells his landlady that he doesn't have his rent money yet since he hasn't been paid, to which she responds "That don't confront me none," which I take to mean "that's not my problem" or "that doesn't bother me any."

I've never heard that expression before and it got me wondering about other archaic and interesting phrases that have fallen out of the common parlance. Anyone else have any favorite disused words or phrases you'd like to share?