Today's word: agerasia (n.) possessing a more youthful appearance than one's true age.

I get the impression that post baby-boomers might think their use of the abbreviation O.M.G. is a recent fad. In actual fact, its first recorded use dates back more than a hundred years, in a letter sent to Winston Churchill in 1917 - coincidentally, on the 9th September - today's date.

Another seemingly "modern" term which is much older than one might think is "dude", which was used as early as 1877. Many "dudes" would probably be shocked to learn it described a priggish, or dandyish gentleman. Also, the action of "un-friending" wasn't invented alongside Facebook - it was first referenced in a letter written by Thomas Fuller, in 1659.

Like all of these words, and unlike the subject of this poem, I naturally appear much, much younger than I am in reality ;-)

My much-treasured Christmas present for 2017 is a book by Paul Anthony Jones: "The cabinet of linguistic curiosities". Each page contains a descriptive story about some obscure or archaic word. It occurred to me it would be a fun exercise to try and write, each day, a poem featuring the "word of the day" from the book.

Thanks for reading.

Image: CC0 licence (public domain), source https://pxhere.com/en/photo/1130811.

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