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The Ruff’s Legacy: From 16th‑Century Fashion to English Word Fossil
Episode 247
Published 12 hours ago
Description
This episode traces the journey of the ruff—a lavish collar that swept England in the mid‑1500s—from a fashionable status symbol and subject of royal law to an obsolete word now preserved only in dictionaries. We explore how its rise and fall illustrate the volatility of English vocabulary, the role of printing in spelling standardization, and the way fashion can leave linguistic fossils.
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