The 23 Oldest Words In Use

 

According to a team of researchers at the University of Reading’s School of Biological Sciences had recently compiled a list of the 23 oldest words, each at least 15,000 years old.

It is hard for languages to survive. Many die out after a few thousand years.

Specific words have short shelf-lives. Why? Reality is always changing. Technology, social mores, politics, and finance will keep evolving and certain things get replaced and thus the words used to identify them get displaced.

New words today become tomorrow’s norm and then a certain number of generations forward these words are erased from society’s use, even memory.

Still, some words have been proving eternal, like the oldest 23 words. Here they are:

Thou
I
Not
That
Way
To Give
Who
This
What
Man/Male
Ye
Old
Mother
To Hear
Hand
Fire
To Pull
Black
To Flow
Bark
Ashes
To Spit
Worm

I am surprised birth, death, love, hate, or other such words didn’t make the cut, yet we have found words or signals to indicate these things ever since humans came to be, or so you might think.

God didn’t make the list either.

Which words will disappear in a century — and how many more will join out lexicon — is anyone’s guess.

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About Brian Feinblum

Brian Feinblum should be followed on www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©2024. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog. His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent.  This award-winning blog has generated over 3.9 million pageviews. With 4,900+ posts over the past dozen years, it was named one of the best book marketing blogs by BookBaby  http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs  and recognized by Feedspot in 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.” For the past three decades, including 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and director of publicity positions at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler. He hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and has spoken at ASJA, Independent Book Publishers Association Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, Morgan James Publishing, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. His first published book was The Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook.  It was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.