IS HUE A FOSSIL?

Nothing fossilizes faster in the brain than sounds, the sounds of a language. The brain refuses to let new sounds in and adapts them to the existing, fossilized "native" ones. This is also true of words. John Simpson, former Editor in Chief of the OED, writes in his The Word Detective: "Hue is a fossil nowadays. That means that it does not have a life of its own anymore and is only found in set phrases which we just repeat with little concept of their original meaning." Black will take no other hue (sobre negro no hay tintura), hue and cry (gritos, griterío, alboroto) are two good examples. Hue may be a fossil, a word hardly used nowadays, that parasitizes other words in ready-made sentences. Phraseology does not mind words, but a collection of words with a set meaning, independent of those individual words. The mystery and challenge of phraseology, and idioms, lies here: individual words matter not although they have a life of their own, with a meaning of their own.