Conservative, Innovative, Archaic
The terms "conservative" and "innovative" are often used in historical linguistics to characterize the extent of change occurring in a particular language or dialect as compared with related varieties. In particular, a conservative variety has changed relatively less than an innovative variety. These descriptive terms carry no value judgment. A particularly conservative variety that preserves features that have long since vanished elsewhere is sometimes said to be "archaic".
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Famous quotes containing the word archaic:
“Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created. The average conservative is a slave to the most incidental and trivial part of his forefathers’ glory—to the archaic formula which happened to express their genius or the eighteenth-century contrivance by which for a time it was served.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)