Sound & Diction
Archaism
Deliberately old-fashioned language — four score, thou — used for its aura. Old words bring their era's authority with them: scripture, epic, law.
"Four score and seven years ago…" — Lincoln
Don't confuse it with Allusion. Allusion points to a specific prior text; archaism borrows a period's diction wholesale without citing anyone.
In the Reader — 6 excerpts
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If …
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
They rode like men invested with a purpose whose origins were antique and diffuse and the wholes thereof were scattered like paper in the wind.
The rest of the family
Alliteration Assonance Onomatopoeia Tmesis Neologism Solecism Epithet