“Every year, hundreds of words are dropped from the dictionary to make room for new words. Lexicographers spend hours researching word usage and may drop words that have been completely neglected by the society.
To reverse this trend, Oxford University Press has launched an initiative called Save the Words that aims to prevent these lesser-known English words from becoming extinct.
Here’s how. You adopt one such word through “Save the Words” and take a pledge to use that word more often in your daily conversations or written communication.
This will directly increase the chance of that word’s survival because the moment lexicographers see discarded words being used in conversations, they may re-include them in the dictionary. Wheatgrass is one such word that was reinstated after missing from the dictionary for several years.
There are hundreds of “lost” words already – vacivity, plegnic, mingent or primifluous for example – all of them, not surprisingly, failed by the Firefox spell checker as well. So go ahead, adopt bring back a nearly-extinct word. In return, you get this nifty certificate.” via Digital Inspiration.
People who dare to use the lost words from this Oxford list had better be leaders or influential connectors in society, otherwise the words will remain on the list, unused.
Instead of the usual unimaginative cussing, a kid at a city playground could sling these arrows at a playmate: “You ‘muculent crosspatch’, “Go faster, you ‘testudineous smellfungus’.” I wince to think of what would happen to an 8yr old wordsmith who tries this. Ten years ago, one of my sons was stared down by incredulous youngsters when he emerged from the plastic tunnel in a city park and said to them, “Ahoy there, mateys!” (It’s “hey, asshole” now, don’t you know that, ya weirdo?)
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I’ve always liked ‘forswonk and forswatt’, meaning sunburnt and exhausted which I saw in the Fairie Queene ages ago and have never forgotten.
Though I have forgotten most everything else.
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