Don’t be a juggins – why some words deserve to fall out of use | Sam Leith
We shouldn’t worry when a word falls into obscurity. There’s usually a good reason, and a new one will always fill its place
by Sam Leith
Nov 16, 2018
3 minutes
Conservationists are all around us, forever appearing on our televisions with their pleas for this noble, endangered mountain lion or that cute, imperilled subspecies of vole. But 70-year-old Edward Allhusen is one of a slightly different stripe. Instead of trying to prevent creepy-crawlies going extinct, he is trying to save the lives of words. In a new book, Betrumped: The Surprising History of 3,000 Long-Lost, Exotic and Endangered Words, he has included a sort of highly endangered list of 600 vocabulary items, culled according to no.
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