Archaic KJV Word
Praise
Modern equivalent: singing
What Was Lost
The seven-fold vocabulary of human response to God. Each Hebrew praise word was a different physical act: halal (to rave wildly), yadah (to hurl your hands toward heaven), towdah (sacrifice of thanksgiving), shabach (to address in a loud tone), barak (to kneel), zamar (to pluck strings), tehillah (spontaneous song). One English word buried seven embodied responses.
Closest Survivor in Modern English
praise (still used but almost exclusively means 'singing songs to God')
Peak Usage (1611)
KJV Psalm 150:6 -- 'Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord'; Psalm 22:3 -- 'Thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel'
Died still used but performance-ized (~1970)
Hebrew had seven distinct words for praise (halal, yadah, towdah, shabach, barak, zamar, tehillah), each describing a different physical act. English collapsed them all into one word, then reduced it to singing.
What Replaced It
“singing”
One form of praise; halal meant 'to shine/boast/rave'; yadah meant 'to throw out the hands'; shabach meant 'to shout'
“worship music”
A genre; praise was a full-body, multi-form response involving shouting, dancing, kneeling, lifting hands, and public testimony
“complimenting God”
Trivializes cosmic declaration into polite flattery