I really like words. Seriously, I use them all the time! Reading, writing, quotidian colloquy. But I have recently heard some disturbing news. I mean, I guess deep down inside I always knew, but until my worst fears were confirmed by an outside source, I held out hope that it wasn't true. There are words on the brink of expiration. The threshold of existence. Near their demise. Falling, quickly and abruptly, into obsolescence! Words that once served a purpose and held their places proudly and alphabetically in lexicons across the world, are now being tossed aside like relics of a bygone generation. Deemed antiquated, outdated, useless and ineffective they are being removed from dictionaries to make room for new words like woot, edamame and subprime. I get it. Really, I do. I understand the necessity of it. I mean, the only reason language exists is to serve the community that uses it. It allows us to freely exchange thoughts, feelings and ideas. If a word no longer performs this function, it will drop out of our vernacular naturally. It just seems so harsh, you know, to take them out of the dictionary after all they have done for us. Toiling away year after year until suddenly, when they are no longer needed, being torn from the very pages where they waited so faithfully for some amateur philologist to find them. And, as usual, I digress a bit.
The point is that someone even more passionate about words than I, has taken up the cause. Launched a formal protest even, and issued a call to action! For those of us so inclined, we can adopt one of these vanishing words and try to resuscitate it. How fun is that!? So, please help Savethewords.
I narrowed my choices to thural, coquinate, fallaciloquence, flosculation and ictuate, finally choosing to assimilate flosculation into my vocabulary. As part of my pledge to do so, I publicly take the oath of adoption: "I hereby promise to use this word, in conversation and correspondence, as frequently as possible, to the best of my ability." Ah...one down!
And A happy, happy AlphabeThursday to you...Mrs. Matlock just loves her some words...
Quote of the Day: "Language artfully used can make you happy to be alive."
--Ben Yagoda author (from If You Catch An Adjective, Kill It)
I think our teacher will love this "wordy" Alphabe Thursday contribution! And I learned some new words!
ReplyDeleteLove your so witty & erudite ‘F’ post!
ReplyDeleteHappy Alphabe-Thursday,
LOLA:)
Btw Your quick Alphabe-Thursday link
Informative stop this morning. I love words too and I learned a few new ones today.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure I can add these words into my everyday conversations to help save them.
ReplyDeletevery cool idea. . .I do think that all words should be saved. However, I would love to hear you use that in conversation!
ReplyDeleteI can't even tell you how much I loved this post. On every level.
ReplyDelete=)
HAHAHAHA! I LOVE this post!!!!
ReplyDeleteFascinating, but now I have to go look up all those darn obsolete words!
ReplyDeletewow that is so cool!
ReplyDeleteI like gleimous for the letter G
slimy: full of phlegm Oh my word, Phil is a gleimous guy haha I'm going to tell him .
I also found frenigerent
adj. bearing a bridle
The frenigerent horse we found in the woods came fifth at the Grand National Steeplechase.
Well I for one had to look all of them up. Nice post!~Ames
ReplyDeleteFabulous flasculation! Wordsmithing at its finest. Fantastic F post.
ReplyDeleteDelightful post, and may I say congratulations? In putting "flosculation" into google (because I hadn't a clue what it meant), I found this blog entry as #7 on the front page. You will be inundated with flosculation searches!
ReplyDeleteI often hear words other use and devise a way to get them into my own vocabulary more often. :D
ReplyDeleteGood luck on this one. :)
Very interesting post.I must admit I had never heard the words that you described in the post.Now off to understand what each one means.:-)
ReplyDeleteI've been wanting to increase my vocabulary, so thank you for pointing me to "save the words"!
ReplyDeleteHey.
ReplyDeleteYou're among friends here.
You can tell us the truth.
You are the person that writes those things for Readers Digest, right? The obscure word thing that I usually get two correct...oops, I meant to say ... almost all correct ... on!
What a great link to Alphabe-Thursday!
You are ridiculous!
You know, the new defininition of the word that means cool.
Geez.
Great link.
A+
...plus that is just messing with my Scrabble game. It may be a word, but now that it isn't in the dictionary I can't use it? Seriously??
ReplyDeleteI tend to read older classics and so sometimes I think a word is common that has fallen out of usage a century or so. Seeing the words finally die is sad, though.
ReplyDeleteAbe Vigoda is a philologist? Who knew?
ReplyDeleteBen Yagoda!
ReplyDelete