Lexical obsolescence among Italian Anglicisms

The study of neology is historically at the basis of lexicography. By contrast, the study of obsolescence, i.e. the discontinued use, the decline or the fall into disuse of words, is a much less popular field of study because of several reasons, including a general lack of interest and the difficulty in establishing whether a word is really no longer used. This article addresses the notion of obsolescence, dealing with a specific area of neology, i.e. lexical borrowing, and focussing in particular on a selection of ‘archaic’ and ‘obsolescent’ English loanwords in Italian extracted from the Dictionary of European Anglicisms (Görlach 2001). The aim is to discuss the reasons which lead them to disuse and verify their present status as Anglicisms in today’s Italian. This analysis is preceded by a short discussion of the notion of obsolescence and a brief historical overview of the penetration of English loanwords in Italian.