Helen Carey books has written about words being omitted from the dictionary, that I think will interest a lot of you. Re-blogged in case you missed it. Thanks Helen.
Regular followers of my blog will know that I am concerned about words fading out of the English language. So imagine my dismay when I read recently that the Oxford University Press has expunged several words from the Oxford Junior Dictionary. And no, the deleted words are not out of use or particularly outdated, they are just apparently not ‘relevant to a modern day childhood’. The missing words include acorn, adder, bluebell, dandelion, kingfisher, otter and even conker. And the words taking their place in the new edition include broadband, blog, bullet point and, wait for it, celebrity!
It worries me that so many of the excluded words refer to our countryside, our fauna and flora. Do we really want to educate the next generation to give priority to cut-and-paste, voicemail and chatroom, over pasture, cowslip and cygnet?
Of course it is not just the younger…
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Barbara Pyett 
“gonnen” from goennen. It’s a shame it will be gone
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It’s such a lovely word Bridget, its loss says a lot about our selfish ways in Western society.
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That does look kind of crazy, although if it is an international edition it makes a squeem more sense, but still not much.
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It’s hard to keep up with all of the changes that are happening. I hope that doesn’t mean the end of the bluebells.
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I’m sure it won’t. Give it a few years and they’ll be back in there again.
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I hope you’re right MT.
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I can see the need for including the newer words, but I, too am amazed at the words removed. As an Aussie, I would probably only use dandelion and maybe bluebell, but when visiting Ireland last year I was delighted to see a mother spending the afternoon with her children bashing conkers out of a tree.
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Sally, thanks for your visit. I agree! It’s probably because we played with conkers as children,( in Australia), that I hate to think children don’t have that pleasure anymore, and I hate to think machines will take their place!
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The mind boggles! Just as well we cannot be fined for using words that do not appear in the Oxford dictionary. The list of words surprised me, I wondered if it was an April Fool’s day post, posted too early. None of those things named have ceased to exist and I am at a loss to understand why they would be taken out. Shaking my head in disbelief, Barbara.
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I like the German word Gonnen meaning the opposite of envy, a word we’ve lost in English. It seems our culture has no need of it, which is a sad statement.
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I hadn’t heard of gonnen before, Barbara. And, of the top of my head, I was at a loss to even think of what the opposite of envy would be! Contentment, perhaps?
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It means being happy for someone else to succeed. We’ve lost the English word!
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