I received an email today from a colleague.
Nothing odd about it until I reached the final sentence and his last word…
therein.
My head ricocheted back. Who uses a word like that? I reread and no, there wasn’t a smudge on my glasses distorting the page.
It said ‘therein’.
I half expected the ‘word police’ to come running in, siren’s blaring to take a statement and then leave to make an arrest.
I mean – therein?
Surely just as new modern words and phrases are added to dictionaries every year, words like ‘thereby’, ‘wheresoever’ ‘herein’ and ‘therein’ should be siphoned out or archived.
They belong to another age. Leave them in legal documents by all means, but everyday conversation – really?
I googled the word, my interest piqued. A site called ‘Therein Quotes’ provided me with some thought-provoking reading.
From Vincent Van Gogh and Helen Keller, therein chimes so eloquently within their words.
That’s about as modern as I could find.
Just saying.