Archaic KJV Word
Wilderness
Modern equivalent: natural area
What Was Lost
The stripping. The wilderness was where God took Israel to strip away everything they depended on except Him -- no food (manna required), no water (rock required), no direction (pillar required). Every human resource was removed so they would learn to depend entirely on God. The wilderness was God's classroom of radical dependence.
Closest Survivor in Modern English
wilderness (still used but the testing/stripping/dependence theology is buried under hiking trail imagery)
Peak Usage (1611)
KJV Deuteronomy 8:2 -- 'The Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness'; Matthew 4:1 -- 'Jesus was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness'
Died still used but nature-ified (~1900)
Hebrew midbar ('uninhabited wasteland/place of testing/where you have nothing but God/the stripping-down place') romanticized into 'beautiful nature preserve.' The wilderness became a vacation destination rather than a place of mortal testing.
What Replaced It
“nature”
Beautiful and recreational; midbar was barren, dangerous, and deadly without divine provision
“desert”
Geographical feature; the wilderness was a theological location -- where everything is stripped away except God
“countryside”
Pleasant rural area; the wilderness was where you could die without God's direct intervention