In a message to the Senate, March 1, 1886, declining to furnish papers on file relative to suspensions from office during the recess of that body, President Cleveland said, “And so it happens that after an existence of nearly twenty years of an almost innocuous desuetude these laws are brought forth, apparently the repealed as well as the unrepealed, and put in the way of an executive who is willing, if permitted, to attempt an improvement in the methods of administration.”
He referred particularly to a statute passed by Congress in 1867, during President Johnson’s administration, enacting that “in cases of suspension from office during a recess of the Senate, the President should report, within twenty days after the next meeting of the Senate, such suspension, with the evidence and reasons for his action in the case.” The message of President Cleveland was called forth by a resolution of the Senate censuring the Attorney-General for his refusal to transmit certain papers relating to suspensions from office, as requested by the Senate, particularly in the case of George M. Dustin, attorney of the United States for the southern district of Alabama.
from S.A. Bent, comp. Familiar Short Sayings of Great Men. 1887.
On Language; The Penumbra Of Desuetude
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/10/04/magazine/on-language-the-penumbra-of-desuetude.html
Ok, it’s a real word. But I ain’t gonna use it! :-)