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Home / World

Academics push to revive forgotten words

Independent
14 Jan, 2015 02:56 AM2 mins to read

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Photo / Thinkstock

Photo / Thinkstock

Every year newly coined words, or neologisms, are included in dictionaries and greeted with outrage from vocabulary puritans.

Words like "mahoosive" (exceptionally large) and "globesity" (the worldwide outbreak of morbid obesity) have recently hit the headlines before retiring to obscurity.

Read more: The curious search online as dictionaries gather dust

This year though, logophiles are being encouraged by academics at Wayne State University in Michigan to instead focus on the "glorious variety" of long-lost words that have fallen out of favour with today's lexicographers.

To further that aim, the Word Warrior project has released a top 10 of lost words for 2015.

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It includes rarely heard words - such as "opsimath" and "subtopia" - in an effort to draw attention to what writer and project leader Christopher Scott Williams calls "some of the English language's most expressive - yet regrettably neglected - words".

It is a project that British author Mark Forsyth, who recently released The Horologicon: A Day's Jaunt Through the Lost Words of the English Language, welcomes.

He said: "Of course some words deserve bringing back as we don't have an equivalent word for them today.

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"But I'm not so sure about words like 'knavery' and 'caterwaul' that I see have made the list; after all I still use them today. Are they really forgotten?

"I prefer bringing back old words that have a very specific use and could potentially catch on.

"For example, I use the word 'poon'. It's something to put under the leg of a table to stop it rocking and I ask for one every time I end up in a restaurant with a wobbly table.

"Because of the context, the waiter always understands exactly what I mean."

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13 Nov 01:23 AM

Word Warrior's Top 10 words to be revived for 2015:

Caterwaul: A shrill howling or wailing noise.

Concinnity: The skillful and harmonious arrangement or fitting together of the different parts of something.

Flapdoodle: Nonsense.

Knavery: A roguish or mischievous act.

Melange: A mixture of different things.

Obambulate: To walk about.

Opsimath: A person who begins to learn or study only late in life.

Philistine: A person who is hostile or indifferent to culture and the arts, or who has no understanding of them.

Rapscallion: A mischievous person.
April Fools' Day was better than Christmas for the young rapscallion.

Subtopia: Monotonous urban sprawl of standardised buildings.

(Source: Word Warrior's 2015 Top 10)

- Independent

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