many of the obscure words that I feature haven't actually been spoken since.. oh, the Great Vowel Shift maybe?!

Yes, there are many things that amuse me in these inkhorn dictionaries. A friend of mine who did graduate studies in Egyptology, once smirkingly told me that one professor at UCLA insisted on his Hieroglyphic Egyptian students going to the language lab a couple of times a week to listen to tapes of reconstructed Ancient Egyptian phonology.

Ceci n'est pas un seing.