Registers are a blind spot of traditional Mandarin lexicography.
Due to a general unfamiliarity with the literature of the Republican period, for many everyday objects often the only expression known to the lexicographer is a colloquialism.
In HuangSupplement, a lemma is considered obsolete only when another word of the same register is preferred in current usage. Such is case with 乾濕計, in place of which we tend to use 濕度計 on the analogy of 溫度計.
The same, however, couldn’t be said for 塵拂. It’s the only word suited to literary usage for what one might call 撣子 in vulgar speech.
| Literary | Word Class | Non-U | Colloquial | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 半旗 | adverb | 降半旗 etc. | ||
| 塵拂 | noun | 撣子 etc. | ||
| 處處 | adverb | 在在 | 在在 is an affected archaism | |
| verb | 典藏 | 所有 etc. | cf. what Cheng said about libraries viewing public-domain books as their property | |
| 墮胎 | verb | 人工流產 | 打胎 | |
| noun | 精品 | officialese | ||
| 紕繆 | noun | 硬傷 | 差錯 | |
| 前述 | adjective | 前揭 | -揭 faux-classical; from Japanese | |
| noun | 潤筆 | 潤筆費 | ||
| 上述 | adjective | 上揭 | -揭 faux-classical; from Japanese | |
| adjective | 氏著 | faux-classical | ||
| 梳理 | verb | 爬梳 | cf. s.v. 耙梳 | |
| 死 | verb | 離開 | ||
| (不)準確 | adjective | (不)科學 | a loose use of 科學 |