Lexical Discontinuities between Generations: Recent Inuit Cases from North Baffin Island

During recent fieldwork in North Baffin Island, I came across several Inuit terms well known by elders but fading into oblivion among young people. In an apparent paradox, these more or less forgotten words among young Inuit generations designate objective situations that in most cases still belong to the contemporary world, at least as possibilities. It is argued that the loss of these words is the result of the obsolescence of the social practices and cultural understandings that the words reference.