24 Words Collins English Dictionary wants to discard

Forums: English, Language, Dictionaries, Lexicography
Email this Topic • Print this Page

Hangman, Spare That Word: The English Purge Their Language

Quote:

For feminists examining muliebrity (the condition of being a woman), or soothsayers putting out their latest vaticination (prophecy), the available lexicon may soon get slimmer. The lexicographers behind Britain's Collins English Dictionary have decided to exuviate (shed) rarely used and archaic words as part of an abstergent (cleansing) process to make room for up to 2,000 new entries. "We want the dictionary to be a reflection of English as it is currently spoken," says Ian Brookes, managing editor of Collins, "rather than a fossilized version of the language."

Good luck with that. Here in Old Blighty, the birthplace of English, the dictionary's compilers face passionate resistance from language lovers who believe that any cull reduces the richness and variety that make language powerful " and leaves us all a bit dumber. "Newspapers are often accused of setting their reading level for 12-year-olds," one opponent wrote on an online message board. "Spare us dictionaries that do the same!"

Topic Stats
Top Replies
Link to this Topic

Type: Discussion • Score: 11 • Views: 7,025 • Replies: 44

No top replies

@Robert Gentel,

24 Words the CED Wants to Exuviate (Shed)

Quote:

Here are a list of words the Collins English Dictionary wants to discard to make room for up to 2,000 new entries.

Abstergent: Cleansing

Agrestic: Rural

Apodeictic: Unquestionably true by virtue of demonstration

Caducity: Perishableness

Caliginosity: Dimness

Compossible: Possible in coexistence with something else

Embrangle: To confuse

Exuviate: To shed

Fatidical: Prophetic

Fubsy: Squat

Griseous: Somewhat grey

Malison: A curse

Mansuetude: Gentleness

Muliebrity: The condition of being a woman

Niddering: Cowardly

Nitid: Bright

Olid: Foul-smelling

Oppugnant: Combative

Periapt: An amulet

Recrement: Refuse

Roborant: Tending to fortify

Skirr: A whirring sound, as of the wings of birds in flight

Vaticinate: Prophesy

Vilipend: To treat with contempt

1 Reply

Well gee. I will miss being able to work all those into a sentence at least once a day. (I'm not sure I have EVER worked one into a sentence ever).

But I oppose diminishing the language by elimination of a single word. I agree that shrinking our vocabulary diminishes the richness of the language. (And think how much harder it will be to play the game Dictionary if they take all the less familiar words out.)

2 Replies

@Foxfyre,

Foxfyre wrote:

I will miss being able to work all those into a sentence at least once a day.

Amid a skirr of many dictionary pages, the periapt of pendant purists, less mansuetude linguists will surely vilipend these abstergent lexicographical minds as an apodeictic roborant to their oppugnant vaticinations against the niddering exuviation by fubsy lexicographers who treat their language with caducity, whose agrestic minds exhibit the griseous caliginosity to ignore their fatidical proclamations and nitid illuminations against the malison of linguistic censorship and the olid recrement it represents.

"Make no effort to embrangle the issue," they say, "the old words are compossible with the new words, and Mr Collin's muliebrity should be proclaimed far and wide."

1 Reply

@Robert Gentel,

Well said!

I think...

0 Replies

0 Replies

Periapt is alive and well in the fantasy world. I see no sense in getting rid of it from the dictionary.

0 Replies

Funny, I've used some of those words, since they come from Latin. I've certainly used caducity & fatidical. I've probably used nitid, vaticinate and vilipend, which are nitidly meaningful to me. Abstergent, agrestic, apodeictic, caliginosity, compossible, griseous, mansuetude, muliebrity, olid and oppugnant are also clear to me, because of their ethimology. For recrement, roborant and malison I'd need a few seconds of thought: they sound XIX Century. Embrangle, exuviate and niddering seem to get to their point. Skirr is pure poetry. Fubsy and periapt I can do without, but why should all English speakers?

1 Reply

@Robert Gentel,

Language is ever evolving. Try to read Chaucer in the original. But there are words and phrases which have not gained the prominence they deserve--

l.Fist bump

2.Cool

3. My children's Daddy

4. gang banger

5. Jewish Doctors who created AIDS

6.God DAMN America( to replace the worn out-God Bless America)

7. The US 9/11 plot

These are some of the words and phrases which have been neglected by our lexicographers. They will assume much more prominence in the near future.

0 Replies

@Robert Gentel,

Everybody seems to have their knickers in a bunch because Collins English Dictionary is considering dropping a bouquet of outdated words from its pages. Y'all act as though that will effectively eliminate the words from the English language. Language doesn't work that way and Collins doesn't make the rules of which words are acceptable and which are not. There is no point in burdening a general purpose dictionary with verbiage that to the average user might as well be foreign language. The OED will still have those words available to the scholar. Collins in the UK, like Webster's or Funk&Wagnall's in the US, is meant for the non-professional, for the man or woman who isn't very likely to tun across any of the words being considered for exuviation.

3 Replies

@Merry Andrew,

Cudnave said it better meself, MA.

0 Replies

@fbaezer,

Fubsy: Squat

Griseous: Somewhat grey

Malison: A curse

Mansuetude: Gentleness

Niddering: Cowardly

Oppugnant: Combative

Skirr: A whirring sound, as of the wings of birds in flight

Vaticinate: Prophesy

Vilipend: To treat with contempt

These I refuse to do without!!!

Fubsy is a favourite of mine:

"Oppress not the cubs of a stranger,
But hail them as sister and brother
For though they be little and fubsy,
It may be the bear is their mother."

This is part of thr Jungle Law!!!!

All these words are in older books.

What is one to do if unable to look them up?

Vandalism!!! Visigothism!!! Maledictions upon them!!

0 Replies

@Merry Andrew,

I agree, this is not an unabridged dictionary and all dictionaries exclude some words. Folks may differ on what words deserve to make the cut but for the most part this list isn't that controversial (lexicographically).

0 Replies

@Merry Andrew,

Nonsense! Next thing they'll be changing the calendar again, and we'll all lose a day of our lives....and then daylight saving, and the cows will fade or something.

But...seriously for a moment....most of us (of course) only have access to abridged dictionaries, and some of those words not being there will make older plays and novels etc. harder for new readers to understand.

Nonetheless, I'll only get my panties in a small bunch, since you tell me it's not worth a major one.

1 Reply

I can't even remember the last time I opened a hard-copy dictionary.

1 Reply

@dlowan,

All you niddering nabobs of negativism!

0 Replies

@George,

I bought a really cool one at a garage sale for 50 cent just the other day, as a friend once advised me that I might could use one...

24 Words Collins English Dictionary wants to discard

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know