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Latest comment: 14 years ago11 comments7 people in discussion
I think apothecary is basically obsolete in the US, though of course intelligible to international sophisticates such as ourselves. DCDuringTALK23:53, 8 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
The person sense isn't obsolete, as I've heard it used in popular television shows. Friends (not too long ago, I guess) had an episode that featured an "apothecary table", which was mentioned over and over. I'd consider the person sense archaic, but not obsolete. However, as a "pharmacy/drugstore", I would agree that it's obsolete in the US. --EncycloPetey02:06, 9 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
Checking COCA, it isn't exactly obsolete, but it only occurs once in the spoken material. It seems to be used a great deal attributively (80/159) usually in reference to antique items or non-US or historical situations. Much of the non-attributive use has the same historical and non-US pattern. Our register/usage tags don't quite capture it. DCDuringTALK03:11, 9 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
I'd suggest calling it dated, rather than obsolete. I just finished a book circa 1950 that mentioned it. Don't we use obsolete for those words not used for over 100 years.--Dmol07:32, 9 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
No one has ever said the person sense is obsolete. We label it now historical, which seems perfectly fine to me. Well, I added the label, so I would think that. Ƿidsiþ08:35, 9 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
I also think "now historical" is fine for the person sense. As for the place sense, as far as I can tell: (1) it's basically an error; (2) like the person sense, it's "historical" or "now historical"; (3) unlike the person sense, it's grown more common over time, because back when the person sense was more common, people actually knew the word's proper sense, so the error was less likely. (I note that "worked at an apothecary" gets several times as many Google-hits as "worked at a druggist" and "worked at a pharmacist" put together, even though "Worked as an apothecary" can't even begin to compare with "worked as a druggist" and "worked as a pharmacist".) —RuakhTALK10:50, 9 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
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