Which word would you save?

For a word, making it into the dictionary is only the first step. Staying there is quite another matter.

Some beauties, it seems, are destined for the semantic scrap heap. The editors at Collins have decided that they can dispense with the 24 rarely-used words listed below. No longer will you be able to vaticinate about the future of a niddering Gordon Brown. Or hold forth on the fact that the Republican campaign has become embrangled in economic matters.

Unless, that is, you can convince the dictionary dons that one of them is worth keeping. The Times explains today that a reprieve is possible. Use one of these words enough and it may make it back from the caliginosity.

This Comment Central poll will be open all week. There are three separate polls for technical reasons but please just pick the one word you most want to save from all 24 and cast your vote. Then spread the word...literally.

VOTING IS NOW CLOSED. Results will be posted shortly.

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Comments

[Adam Articulate]

The author is an exquisite dandiprat.

[Sarah]

I would like to point out that periapt should be pushed off the list - it is a common term in the fantasy genre, especially the popular Dungeons and Dragons series of books and games.

[Rob Wiltsher]

I would like to save the word 'film' which seems to be disappearing under the weight of yet another American invader, the awful 'movie' - could the latter be banned from the BBC and all media in this country or are we now the 53rd State ?

[Jack Malvern]

Is it really necessary to vilipend the author so?

[Tony]

I first discovered the word 'Fubsy' whilst reading Lorna Doone in Primary School in the 1950s. The word is used to discribe short broad cornish women of that era and to me it envokes the image of any woman as wide as she is tall who is homely, loving and very likeable. It will be a shame to loose such a word from my childhood.

[julia lucie]

These words are perfectly compossible within a modern dictionary and should not be considered recremental.Why should we be vilipenditious of our painstakingly built, exquisite language?

[Sas]

I agree with Sarah; Periapt is a common term in the fantasy genre.
I, for one, use it about once a week.

[Kathy/ME]

When did a dictionary become a resource for checking the meaning only of contemporary words? The words skirring and fubsy are familiar to me as a reader-- and the others look reasonably useful too. Newspapers are often accused of setting their reading level for twelve-year-olds. Spare us dictionaries that do the same!

[David Pybus]

As an aromancer and recent Dragons' Den "winner" I would firmly vote for agrestic. It is used in the perfume and flavour industry quite extensively to describe an aroma "note" or type which is "of the countryside" (such as hay, heather, forest depths or meadow.)
Perhaps the dictionary researchers have been looking for the "wrong notes,but not necessarily in the right places!"

[Richard]

They may be pushed out of Collins' homely little edition, but what care I for that tawdry little octavo when I have the righteous Complete Oxford and a good stout magnifying glass? Orts to the paper-savers!

[Mike Fischer]

In effect, I've voted for 13 of these by selecting each as a Worthless Word for the Day (see URL). These include agrestic, apodictic (spelling preferred by Coleridge), caducity, embrangle, fubsy, malison, mansuetude, muliebrity, niddering, recrement, roborant, vaticinate, and vilipend. I suppose of these, my *favorite is muliebrity.

http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd/

[politicfun]

I would like to save the word "vilipend" because it is also an italian word, my language.

[Robert Seddon]

On glancing at the word list, I noted that 'apodeictic' is familiar to me from (a fairly recent translation of) Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason' - it's unclear to me whether the alternative form 'apodictic', which is used in the translations of Husserl I've encountered, is also on the hit list - and 'compossible' from Leibniz. I have a sense this is something of a publicity stunt, but would have expected Collins to exhibit less ignorance in their stunt of standard texts on even undergrad. Philosophy syllabuses.

[James]

I third Sarah & SAS's exclusion of periapt.

In addition, malison is also often used in Dungeons & Dragons. I recall "Greater Malison" being a very useful spell.

[CHT]

If these words are removed from useage, common or otherwise, author Cormac McCarthy ("Suttree", "Child of God", All the Pretty Horses", etc.) will suffer a great loss.

[A. Nester]

Apodeictic, compossible, embrangle are all words that I honest-to-god really do use. The first two are live words in philosophy departments (where I work), if nowhere else. Don't get rid of these three.

[Larry Dougherty]

I wish you had a place where one could suggest a word for addition to your list. I have, for more than a decade, been trying to find out why, several editions ago, Black's Law Dictionary eliminated the word Hysteropotmoi from its pages. There were some that turned up in the 1990's, Japanese soldiers who had held out after WWII. And I fear there will be some arising out of the U. S. incursion into Iraq. Anyway, I suggest the addition of Hysteropotmoi to your list. Larry Dougherty

[Cuthbert Oblong]

What an oppugnant bunch of comments...

[Maurice]

'embrangle', 'fubsy' and 'skirr' ... interesting that the words that most people want to save are the anglo-saxon ones. This seems to correct. We can always get the latin ones back, but once an anglo-saxon word is lost, it's gone forever.

[Dennis Walder]

'Skirr' should be kept: I have heard it used in Scotland to refer to the sound of birds rising up out of the bracken or long grass; and it is wonderfully onomatopoeic.

[TONY]

I would have likrd to save the word GAY, but no one cared when it was hijacked. I am heterosexual, therefore I can never be gay. It's a sad life.

[M Barton]

I agree with Larry Dougherty (22 Sep 2008) and should like to ask the the word shram, meaning to cause to shrink or shrivel with cold; to benumb; is preserved for posterity by frequent use - very useful in describing oneself as 'shrammed', and as I have recently found, delighting members of the 30-something generation who had never come across it.

[BS]

I use embrangle all the time. Seriously. Why would a dictionary need to remove unpopular words?

[m wilson.]

I would like to add a word for the description of politicians: those who tell lies; "Bliars". it is already in use in the particular but should be used in general terms as there is so much of it.

[m wilson.]

The word "smart" as used by americans is stupid. The original meant tidy and well dressed. The american meaning can vary between clever, sneaky, underhanded etc. It has no connotation to intelligence.

[kalebtrotter]

They can do as they wish with their little reference work. Most of the words above are common in medieval, modern, and even post-modern literature. Their approval or disapproval will do nothing to change the fact that these words are beautiful, and will remain in print and use. In essence, Collins can do what it wants, just don't expect anyone to care. I pronounce a malison on their olid "dictionary."

[Joe Camel]

None of the words are going to disappear from the English language, only from Collins's silly little toy dictionary.

Be that as it may, I vote to save malison. I like the sound of it.

[Paige]

Despite the fact that I am a 17 year old girl at an average public high school, a seemingly perfect advocate of "teenglish", I have read or used most of the words listed. I think the banishment of these words would be silly at best.

If a word is used in known works of literature, works that are still taught, read, and loved, how could Collins justify deleting them from the dictionary? That seems absurd.

[Talese]

Oppugnant and exuviate are words I have heard recently and I cant believe that they are on this list. There are many more idiotic unused words to get rid of rather than these two.

[Merrily1941]

When you fail to do your homework in school, you have arbarbollus of the eyeball! This is what my History teacher proclaimed in 1958!!!

[Marcel Arnall]

How about saving the word "may"? It is being, incorrectly, replaced by the word, "can" when, of course, they mean two different things.

[ROB HEARD]

Skirr is such a wonderfully onomatopoeic word that I'm sure it will stay with us.

[Tim Boulton]

There is actually a need for a new word: one to replace the ugly phrase "not-for-profit" used by so many commentators.

[John Adams]

Why must we choose from this list? Why not include e.g.'boak/boke'. Onomatopoeic,Old English, avoids the unnecessary neologism 'barf'.

[Peter]

I use several of these words, not very often, but it's nice to know they're there, so to speak. Whilst I accept that dictionaries have to reflect changing times, they should surely also remind us of the treasure trove of rarely-used words available for us all.

[Kevin Doyle]

A colleague once inadvertently made up the word cohegent - by combining cohesive and cogent. I'm not sure what the definition should be exactly, but it seemed like a perfectly good word at the time.

[Peter GODDARD]

It is a sad day when part of the Murdoch "empire" dictates to us what English words exist.

We need an académie anglaise to oversee our language; not a North American media magnet.

[Andrew May]

I don't know if the word is obsolete yet, but can anyone inform me what to 'miliband' means?

[Sue Doughty]

HORRID is a word that is little used these days and in danger of extinction - yet the meaning is obvious, the spelling is easy, and the impact accurate.
Words do not go extinct when out of fashiion, and new oes evolve - and that is the beauty of English

[brian keating]

I think one should Predeplete and continue to prosapatate.

[John Ledbury]

'recrement' surely has a new life in our recycling world? I don't see why any words should be lost. If Mr F wants them saved he is in a perfect position to use them.

[Steve]

Compossible and embrangle are beautiful-sounding words that seem to mean as they sound; they should be saved on this basis alone. Muliebrity achieves such heights of pointlessness and obscurity that it takes on an almost mythical character - it is my new favourite word for today. The backwaters of the English language are a wonderful place to lose yourself.

[James K]

Why should we have to get rid of any of these words? The charm of the English language stems from the fact that it is made up of such an extensive and colourful vocabulary.
I understand that the 24 words above, waiting on dictionary's death row are a little antiquated, however we should have the right to access as many antonyms (and synonyms) as we like!

[Charles]

Removing words from the English language to save print costs at Collins? A better bet would be to remove Collins from the list of serious dictionaries. Precisely when one needs the help of a dictionary Collins plans to make their own version useless. Anoesis strikes again!

[ALEX MACINTYRE]

Irrelevant as Collins may seem, the fact is that many publishers specify either Collins or the Concise OED as the reference work of choice for their book editors and proofreaders.

If words like these are removed, they will be flagged as questionable during the editorial process, and thus pushed out of popular works. They will have to survive in the "literary" end of the market, which is probably already the case anyway.

[JFEvans]

I personally have seen griseous used a number of times in reference to rocks (normally slates) in Scottish Geological Literature

[Leo]

Save them all! Isn't the beauty of the English language it's diversity?

Why should we have to bin words when they, even the least used ones, could still serve in a creative capacity?

Dictionaries are supposed to be getting bigger, not staying roughly the same size.

[Lindsay]

I'd like to see more of the word Mumpsimus: means one who unfailingly believes they are right despite being presented with overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Because we all know people like that....

[Richard Webster]

If Rob Wiltsher is suggesting that the UK is the 53rd state of the USA, which countries may I ask are its 51st and 52nd? The US is made up of 50 States...

[micky2shoes]

TONY | 22 Sep 2008 23:48:49 - this is a thread about a set of words that may be deleted from a dictionary, and not a place for you to spout your self-pitying dross about how hard done by you are.. do you perhaps think that white heterosexual males are discriminated against? if yes, the daily mail's thataway.

lets get rid of periapt; if it antagonises the readers of godawful fantasy fiction (surely a tautology), and results in fewer overgrown teenagers thinking that they live in a mystical Wyrlde, where magicke and elves wander the blasted lands, then get rid of it. Or perhaps cut out the middle man and just get rid of fantasy fiction publishing; after all, the internet is the natural habitat of the self-absorbed geek...

[David Lambert]

You have it the wrong way around. The words that are in the dictionary do not dictate what is and isn't used. The dictionary is not a magic book, it's just there for a reference.

If a dictionary fails to have a word in that is in use anywhere, no matter how rare, whether written or spoken, then it is not a very good dictionary and certainly no good as a reference book where one can look up the meaning of a word that one does not know.

That's the whole point of what a dictionary is for isn't it?

I don't use any of the words you mentioned above, but that only means that when I do encounter one I'll need to be able to look it up, which is precisely why unusual words should never be dropped.

If you think differently then you haven't understood the purpose of a dictionary.

Whether a word is in use or not is completely irrelevant, if we need to look it up then it has to be in a dictionary, somewhere.

[Nancy Emanuel]

These words are still used and have a certain beauty to them. Anyway, why this perpetual rush to impoverish the English language? We've lost so much cultural/literary diversity already what with the predominance of TV (American)influence, sound-bites, business jargon,......

[peter]

English is a daft language and people who speak it boast of 'the world's largest vocabulary' of which these words are perfect examples. Melvyn Bragg tried to say 'pesticide' was better than Unkrautvernichtungsmittel but any German child knows what bad-plant-killing-stuff means. You have to have Latin to get pesticide...

[cheaton]

Ha ha, I love Peter Goddard's description of Rupert Murdoch as a North American media magnet. What does he attract (except millions of moolah)? I think it should be an Australian media magnate as he was born in Melbourne, although he may have American citizenship. Peter Goddard, you need a dictionary!

[Armand tam]

I'm inspired - some of these words are quite mellifluous!

[deniz]

I chose skirr, mainly because I've actually seen this word used. Some of the others would come in handy but I suspect their cumbersome nature has kept them from being widely used.

[John]

A selective dictionary should have a clear purpose and then what words are needed becomes tryable.
Skirr is useful but obvious in context as is malison Many of the latinised monsters in the list deserve oblivion. Fubsy is neither redundant nor specialist and a good Scrabble word .

[Alison]

Save malison !!

I am delighted to find a new word which is so close to my name.

Alison, London

[Nicole]

I have the same question as Richard Webster; If the UK is the 53rd state of the USA what are 51st and 52nd states?

Rob do not feel bad, Barak Obama has state that there are 57 states, so you are closer to the correct number than him.

[VICKI]

Griseous is not only used in geology (see JFEvans above) but is often used by botanists and mycologists. I have always omitted it from my glossaries on the grounds that it can be found in any good English Dictionary.

[gary]

I would like to save "innit" !!!

[Philip Walker]

I have *seen* apodeictic used, and recently. For it to have a definition in the dictionary seems reasonable.

[cheaton]

Puerto Rico is often referred to as the 51st state as you only need a driver's licence to enter if you are American. Then there's Washington DC.... but maybe Cuba when Castro dies? Or Canada and/or Mexico - see there are loads of possibilities.

[Frank]

Please save "niddering", since it was used in one of my favorite quotes: "niddering nabobs of negativism".

[Omar]

Poppycock! They can take them out of their pesky dictionary, but it isn't the last dictionary in the world, and if the words continue to be used, other dictionaries will no doubt retain them- removing them from the Collins dictionary is hardly going to remove them from the fabric of space-time.

[Stu Savory]

Esquivalience ;-)

[Howard]

I agree with the D&D players above. Periapt & malison are used in Dungeon & Dragons and computers games based on the D&D rules. Some of these - Baldur's Gate & Neverwinter Nights spring to mind - are amongst the best selling computer games of all time.

[Marshall]

@MWilson.
In regards to the word 'Smart'. This word, as many others, have kept the original meaning in North America while changing in it's native country. From the etymology dictionary: Meaning "clever" is attested from c.1303, probably from the notion of "cutting" wit, words, etc.; meaning "trim in attire" first attested 1718...
So 'smart' as in clever was used before 'smart' as in well dressed.

[Barbara]

@Frank:
I hate to be the one to tell you this, but Spiro Agnew actually called them "nattering nabobs of negativity" not "niddering..."

Looking at this list, I wonder how the Collins' editors came up with these particular words to target. Google searches, perhaps?

[Patrick]

Agrestic is the name of the town in the very popular US TV series 'Weeds'and the name is in harmny with its meaning.

[Fred]

The Collins dictionary is not a real disctionary anyway.

[anna B]

I think "fubsy" is such a cute word! how could anyone ever think of removing it from the dictionary. "fubsy" is a word very well suited to its meaning such as bubble, bumble and glub.

[anna B]

im scared that the meaning of "great" is changing because it sounds sarcastic when somebody says "great!". Im worried it will go the way awesome did and be used by sarastic teenagers.

[Roger Foord-Evans]

This subject has gained Collins a great deal of publicity, perhaps they need it. They seem to be setting themselves up as a latter day Samuel Johnson. My comment is that I very pleased there are other references than Collins.

[Lisa]

These words are wonderful. The Spanish versions of some of them are in daily use in Guatemala, where I lived for 15 years. The ones I recognize are caducity (verb caducar, to expire, is very common in Sp); nitid (nitido, very clean and perfect, with an accent on the first i, is common); fatidico (accent on the first i, ill-fated, is also common); manso/a means tame in Spanish (like mansuetude); and vaticinar is used all the time in soccer games, to predict the outcome of a game. Cool words! If it's a publicity stunt it's much more enjoyable than most. I say they save all the words.

[Kate]

Mansuetude cannot go because it has a small family consisting of assuetude, desuetude, and consuetude.

Probably some of these words are losing ground because they are difficult to pronounce.

[Bill Thompson]

Forget it. There is only one way to save a word, and that is to use it.

[Scott]

The word I would like saved is REFERENDUM

[Adrien]

The words "mansuétude", "grisé", "caduc"and "vilipender" are still in common usage in French. It would be sad to see their English progeny die out.

[Ross Jones]

Skirr is so evocative of the real thing - pigeons on the amin street, perhaps? Yes, I agree with Denize.

Are we told of which edition is going to eliminate these? I recall seeing a copy of BIG Oxford, all those feet of shelves - !

At work once, a number of us from differing mother tongues waxed lyrical about English, so many words, not all spoken by any one person, but part of a comprehensive matrix.

[Neal Drummond]

How about the word "martyr"? The sense of having died for your cause seems to have been lost in the tabloid press (cf "metric martyr", today, Daily Mail).

[Eva Granzow]

I took it as a challenge and composed a poem on my poetry blog, and my friend who sent me the link responded on the blog too. Feel free to use the poem.

[Soreofhing]

It will be a sad day if any of these delicious words are lost.
Many moons ago when I was punished at school, I had to stay behind and write out such words together with their meanings.

[DS]

I vote to save all of the words lest our children become so agrestic.

Of course, Georgie Orwell WAS rather fatidical. Do we dare forget what his most famous main character's occupation was?

...or have all the words from that scene been cut out by now?

[citizenw]

As I grow older, I have been told that my hair color is more griseous than its former brown, or the slightly more common descriptive term "grizzled". ;-)

[Paull]

Skrieking, as in 'Skrieking kid' meaning a shrieking, balling mewling child as when just slapped hard with a yard of tripe. A North West of England expression with just a hint of Viking. In fact, probably how Saxon maidens sounded off when deflowered by lusty Norsemen.

[Paull]

Puddin' -- a professional sportsman, typically a rugby league fly-half, performing somewhat below the expectations of the assembled flat-capped cognoscenti.

[Paull]

Tripehound -- certainly a canine but often a man of small consequence, breeding or taste with a predilection for seasoned offal.

[Someone]

what's the opposite of Muliebrity?

[J Clare]

Might I suggest that the word to be removed be "Collins". It obviously has no relevence in the field of learning.

[John Payton]

Dictionaries are meant to document the language, not to dictate it.

[Shi-Hsia Hwa]

I've never seen "abstergent" before but I like it. It must be from the same root as "detergent" and the "Tergeo" cleaning spell in Harry Potter.

"Griseous" and "skirr" seem really odd choices for extinction - they're not that uncommon.

I agree with John Payton and David Lambert - dictionaries are for documenting language which is exactly WHY they should keep in unusual words. If they were making a simplified edition for ESL students or young children that would be another story.

[Alex Brown]

Reclaim the lexicon from fubsy, niddering killjoys and their caliginosity of mind! UUUP THA GUUTS!!!

[Nihiltres]

I can't believe "periapt" is on that list: just yesterday, while playing the role-playing video game Neverwinter Nights, my character equipped a "Periapt of Wisdom" or some such.

It's a virtual crime for dictionaries to fully drop words: the only justification for their omission should be space in a condensed and abridged version, so as to lower printing costs. These old words are a testament to our linguistic heritage as English-language speakers.

In the meantime, I encourage all readers to create entries for their favourite words on Wiktionary, Wikipedia's dictionary counterpart. Wiktionary isn't printed on paper, so you'll never have to worry about your favourite word being deleted there (as long as it isn't just made up :) )...

[Caitlin]

I just used Agrestic in a story I'm writing as it really fits.
I also really like Skirr. I think our language will be poorer if we lose too many words, even if they are little used.