Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts

Friday, August 06, 2010

Oxford's Secret Word Vault

Did you know there are millions of rejected words waiting for the chance to join the English language? According to this article in Time, the Oxford University Press has a vault with "unwords" written on cards and filed away. Some of these words include "dringle" (The watermark left on wood caused by a glass of liquid) and "oninate" (To overwhelm with post-dining breath--I presume this must be onion-breath). Although they were once judged "unsuitable" for the Oxford English Dictionary, there's still a possibility that they could be accepted into future editions of the OED, so they're kept around. It reminds me a bit of Jasper Fforde's Well of Lost Plots, which, if I remember it correctly, contained every book ever written--unpublished, published, good, or bad. As a writer, I think it would be really cool to look at some of those unwords -- and the whole concept sounds like a story idea to me. What do you think? Do we need more words like dringle and oninate, to name things we all come across yet seldom discuss? What unwords would you nominate to the Secret Word Vault?

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