In English, many words have been lost and have become archaic or extinct. The examples of lexical loss since the Old English period include the common old English words “rice”(“realm” or “kingdom”) and “wer”(“man”), which have long been disused as independent words , although they can still be found in some compound words , such as in “bishop-ric”(“bishop’s realm”)and in the horror film term “were-wolf”(“man-wolf” or “wolfman”).
Likewise, many words that were popular among Middle English speakers have lost their Modern English users. As a reading of Shakespeare’s work shows, English has lost many words, such as those taken from Romeo and Juliet: bessem “to be suitable,” wot “to know,” and gyve “a fetter”.
The loss of words is inevitable because as the society develops and life style changes, the referents of many nouns cease to exist , and meanwhile , the changed society and life give rise to the boom of new concepts that have to be expressed in new terms.
Though the loss of words is universal and inevitable, the process of lexical loss is slow and gradual, and indiscernible to speakers of the same generation.