Lexical ultra-conservatism

[Nortaneous]

zrak doesn't mean anything to us but mlat has different connotations, the verb mlatim means to beat violently/to thrash like when someone's in a fit of rage, it's kind of a slang/low register word, hard to explain really.

ah, yes, an Air Upfucker

[Aya]

Cherokee seems resistant to borrowing. The book Beginning Cherokee by Holmes & Smith lists these:

horse: soquili burden-bearer 'he-carries-away-heavy-things'
California: adel'tsuhdlunh where they find money 'money-they-get-from-out-of-there'
flag: gadadi place to be taken care of 'this-place-is-treasured' or 'this-place-is-guarded'
cemetary: tsunadanisohdi they are laid there by others, not finally
attorney: ditiyohihi he argues repeatedly and on purpose with a purpose
policeman: didaniyisgi final catcher 'he catches them finally and conclusively'

Also, from my Cherokee grammar:
North Carolina: jalaguwéetííʔi place of the old Cherokees
pneumonia: goólééhi it lives in winter
I guess the term for "California has changed since the 1970s, because the grammar lists it as adeéljuúhlv́v́ʔi, 'where they have money'.

Anyway, my favorite one is for Nowata, Oklahoma. I'll quote the story from the textbook:

'Nowata', the name for a town and a county in Oklahoma, originated from a Delaware word meaning 'welcome' or 'friendly' and was more correctly pronounced 'nu-wi-ta'. Remnants of the formerly powerful Delaware tribe chose this name for the railroad stop in Oklahoma where they were brought from the East, and near which they had been allotted land for re-settlement. Cherokees, noting how the name came to be pronounced by white settlers, call Nowata 'a-ma-di-ka-ni-gunh-gunh' or 'water-is-all-gone'.

(Note: the textbook has a different Cherokee orthography than the grammar, and doesn't represent vowel length or tones (!).)

[Zaarin]

Cherokee seems resistant to borrowing.

This seems to be true of many Native American languages.

[Tropylium]

Modern Standard Arabic has its fair share of lexical conservatives, which gives interesting neologisms from Arabic's triconsonantal derivation patterns. Some from the top of my head:

dabbāba 'tank' from dabba 'to crawl'

Also known as a chess piece; apparently this used to mean 'siege engine'.