As I read books from earlier periods, I come across forgotten words and senses. Learning the history of these words can be quite amusing, so I will try to keep track of what I have re-discovered for your own amusement.
A List of Some Archaic Words and Senses
Listed alphabetically. ### pi The word pi, in the modern sense, can only refer to a particular irrational number, but I came across it used much differently in this acocunt of Benjamin Franklin’s (emphasis mine):
But so determind I was to continue doing a sheet a day of the folio, that one night, when, having impose’d my forms, I though my my day’s work over, one of them by accident was broken, and two pages reduced to pi, I immediately distrbuted and compos’d it over again before I went to bed; …
—The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin, Page 46, 1996 Dover Thrift Edition
The definition was not hard to find:
Pi , v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Pied}; p. pr. & vb. n. {Pieing}.] (Print.)
To put into a mixed and disordered condition, as type; to mix and disarrange the type of; as, to pi a form. [Written also {pie}.] [1913 Webster]
For a reason I do not understand, I find it very amusing that pie was once a verb.