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These words could fall off Collins dictionary
Published on Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 15:21, Updated on Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 01:38 in Lifestyle section
Tags: Dictionary, The Collins , London
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Cormac McKeown, senior editor for Collins's English dictionaries, said he wanted to squeeze in as many words as possible but the influx of 2,000 new words meant there was not enough space. "We've been fiddling around with the typeface to try to get more in, but it is at saturation point. There is a trade-off between getting them in and legibility."
The Times has decided to save these words, if possible. It is asking its readers worldwide to save their favourite word from among the list and vote for it on the Comment Central weblog of its online edition.
Collins has agreed to the proposal, but has given warning that it is not enough for the words to be used by their champions alone. Endangered words must appear at least six times in Collins's corpus, a database that records word usage in printed, broadcast and online media.
Compilers will discount any references to words if they appear in articles about the campaign to save them.
The campaign has taken off, literally.
Andrew Motion, the Poet Laureate, will support skirr, a word he has occasionally used to describe the sound of beating wings. "I'm a very keen bird-watcher," he told The Times. "Birders do use this word from time to time so I thought it might have a better chance than others, such as vilipend. I saw 10,000 birds flying over the Wash in the evening recently and the noise they made was a skirring noise."
Stephen Fry, the English humorist, actor, author and television presenter, has chosen fubsy, which describes some of the contestants on QI, the quiz show that he presents. He may be able to persuade scriptwriters of "Kingdom", the drama in which he plays the eponymous solicitor, to include the word in its third series.
Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesperson, hopes to revive niddering by using it in his speeches. "It has a sort of withering contempt about it that is useful for political invective," he said.
Stephen Pound, the Labour MP for Ealing North, will campaign for caliginosity by ensuring that it appears in Hansard, the British parliamentary record, and letters to his constituents.
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