As a child I loved to read the dictionary. My family had this ginormous Webster's that weighed probably 10 pounds or more. It smelled of dust and old paper, and the pages were thin, like the ones in my grandmother's bible. Each letter was marked by a rounded indentation on the side and in the back were translations of common words in other languages.I kept the dictionary under my bed. On Saturday afternoons when there wasn't anything else to do, I'd drag it out and start looking up words. What can I say...my family didn't always have the most exciting weekend plans! I'd start out trying to find every bad word I could think of. Some were in there (who knew--a bitch is a female dog!), most weren't. But from there I'd just start reading the pages at random. And if I didn't understand a word in a definition, I'd look it up. I would literally spend hours with this dictionary, soaking up all the words and their meanings.
I'll be the first to admit that it's weird. In fact, most people don't even know this about me so if you could keep it between us, I'd really appreciate it ;D I still love words and word games. Just ask my kids: favorite games on the iPod Touch? Twisty Text, Scramble and ShakeSpell.
So when a note went out on the Central Coast listserv about saving the words, I had to check it out. According to savethewords.org, 90 percent of everything we write uses only 7,000 words. (If you've been reading my posts for a while, you probably know my ducinarious favorites!) As a result, hundreds of words are dropped from dictionaries every year.
Well, I decided to use a few succisive moments to adopt some words that have fallen out of use. I've never been an inveteratist and being sevidical is not my style, so I tried to choose words that wouldn't make me seem too acrasial. My husband thinks I'm nuts, but he's too squiriferous to say a word.
Forty-five minutes later, I realized I'm still the same nerdy girl who loves to get lost in words. I adopted seven words, and I'll try to use them properly. If you enjoy words, check out the site. And hopefully, you won't pudify your friends :D
