‘Dood’ en ‘levend’ in Taal.
The living vocabulary is no more permanent in its constitution than definite in its extent. It is not to-day what is was a century ago, still less what it will be a century hence. Its constituent elements are in a state of slow but incessant dissolution and renovation. ‘Old words’ are ever becoming obsolete and dying out: ‘new words’ are continually pressing in. And the death of a word is not an event of which the date can be readily determined. It is a vanishing process, extending over a lengthened period, of which contemporaries never sec the end. Our own words never become obsolete: it is always the words of our grandfathers that have died with them. Even after we cease to use a word, the memory of if survives, and the word itself survives as a possibility; it is only when no one is left to whom its use is still possible, that the word is wholly dead. Hence, there are many words of which it is doubtful whether they are still to be considered as part of the living language; they are alive to some speakers, and dead to others.
Murray's Woordenboek in de General Explanations, VIII.
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