Top Ten Unusual Words from Famous Hymns (Part 2)

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Top Ten Unusual Words from Famous Hymns—Part 2
Num	Unusual Word	Hymn Title	Excerpt	Lyrics By	Year
10.)	life-gate	To God Be the Glory	...and opened the life-gate so that all may go in	Fanny J. Crosby	1875
9.)	billows	Count Your Blessings	When upon life's billows you are tempest tossed	Johnson Oatman, Jr.	1897
8.)	Calvary	At Calvary	there my burdened soul found liberty, at Calvary	William R. Newell	1895
7.)	fraught	He Leadeth Me	O words with heavenly comfort fraught	Joseph H. Gilmore	1862
6.)	cleft	Rock of Ages	Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee	Augustus Montague Toplady	1776
5.)	bosoms	Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us	With thy love our bosoms fill	Dorothy A. Thrupp	1836
4.)	waft	Jesus Saves!	Waft it on the rolling tide, Jesus saves! Jesus saves!	Priscilla Jane Owens	1882
3.)	manifold	Great Is Thy Faithfulness	Join with all nature in manifold witness	Thomas O. Chisholm	1923
2.)	dross	How Firm a Foundation	I only design thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine	Unclear	1787
1.)	art	How Great Thou Art	How great Thou art	Carl Boberg (orig. Swedish) / Stuart K. Hine	1895 / 1949

Posted September 13, 2026

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This image of "a traditional Christian worship service" was created by Klugmeister using artificial intelligence software. The image was reviewed by Klugmeister before posting on this web page.

Commentary

This funny top ten list is the second of two installments that make light of the way many old-time church hymns include outdated words that are no longer in common use. Each of the 10 obscure words shown on the list is accompanied by: the title of a well-known hymn, an excerpt from the hymn's lyrics including the obscure word, the author of the hymn's lyrics, and the year the hymn was written.

This nostalgic look back in time may be a fun exercise for the old-timers among us, but will most likely go over the young-uns' heads. The Gen Z level of interest in this subject is probably on a par with any discussion of automobiles before the advent of power steering or power windows. It's not that they doubt what the old fart is telling them, but moreso that they just don't find it interesting.

In modern Christian churches, the initial portion of a Sunday service generally features praise-and-worship music sung by a praise team that is accompanied by a band. The band usually includes guitar(s), bass guitar, keyboard, and drums. The congregation stands and some parishioners sing along and/or hold a hand up as a gesture of praise to God, but it's more like watching a show than participating in a sing-a-long.

Back in the day, however, the initial portion would have included traditional hymns sung by the congregation using a hymnal stored in the back of the pew in front of the parishioners. The instrumental accompaniment was typically piano and organ. Half the people in the congregation couldn't sing a lick, but our webmaster still has fond memories of these congregational sing-a-longs from the Baptist churches he grew up in. This type of service hasn't completely disappeared, as some modern churches have an early-morning "traditional" service for old farts like Klugmeister, and a later "contemporary" one for younger folks who find hymns about as relevant as black-and-white TVs. Dacht.

Anyhoo, we've generally extracted these examples of unusual words from the more popular hymns. We've generally avoided the low-hanging fruit of words like thou/thee/thine/thy and similar archaic words. We've also avoided gospel hymns associated with Christmas and the birth of Christ because we think of them more as Christmas songs than church hymns.

As for the obscure words, "life-gate" (item 10) is an unusual compound word that conjures the image of a gate into life. "To God Be The Glory" is the second Fanny Crosby hymn that we've included in this two-part series, which is a testament to her prolific output. "Billows" (item 9) made its initial appearance in Part 1 and appears again in the context of "waves" (of smoke or the sea) in yet another hymn ("Count Your Blessings").

"Calvary" (item 8) is sometimes used in hymns to name the location where Jesus was crucified. This name for the location is shown in Luke 23:33 in some English translations of the Bible, including the ubiquitous King James Version; however, many translations of that verse show the place as "The Skull," which is the English translation of the Latin word calvaria. The equivalent "location" verses in the other three gospels (Matthew 27:33, Mark 15:22, John 19:17) list the location of the crucifixion as the place of the skull, or Golgotha in Hebrew, but no mention of Calvary. We've been unable to develop a concise discussion concerning this, so here's an interesting article on the Calvary topic for your reference.

"How Great Thou Art" was written in Swedish ("O Store Gud") in 1885 by Carl Boberg. (Store means "great" but has two syllables in Swedish, so the title has four syllables in both English and Swedish.) The well-known English translation was written by Stuart Hine in 1949 and popularized in Billy Graham's crusades.

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Top Ten Unusual Words from Famous Hymns—Part 2