Kubis and Howland explain that writers tend to use words that are out of date after reading period literature, this is called the trap of archaic words. When a word is labeled as archaic, it means that the word was once common and relevant but now it is not. Edgar Allen Poe’s poem “The Raven” has archaic examples. The poem was published in 1845, therefore when Poe uses vocabulary like “quath, quoth or methought” for example, is considered archaic. It is plain to see that Edgar Allen Poe used vocabulary in this particular poem that people would most likely not have used in common speech.
The slang trap on the other hand, as Kubis and Howland states on page 140, “Slang not only dates a work, but often it’s meaning is lost over the years.” This
