“New Life” of Obsolete and Rare Lexical Units (Based on the Material of the Section “Word of the Day” in the Oxford English Dictionary).

The article presents phonetic, etymological and semantic characteristics of obsolete and rare lexical units. The study is based on the material of a well-known Oxford English Dictionary. This problem is relevant both in applied and theoretical aspects, since similar vocabulary are either not registered in dictionaries at all, or information about them is not fully provided. The article describes both national and regional (British, American, Scottish, Irish, etc.), as well as normative and alternative pronunciation variants for some obsolete or rare words. In addition to phonetic forms, previous graphic forms of some words have been identified. The features of the word origin and the ways of formation in the language are analyzed. The author studies lexical and grammatical meanings of obsolete and rare words, taking into account the context, especially in the case of polysemantic words. The conclusion is made about the richness of this explanatory dictionary and its importance at the present time for studying various aspects of the English language.