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In early 2015, Twitter discovered that the Oxford Junior Dictionary had culled dozens of words associated with the natural environment. The new edition of the d
by JohnWhigham 5y ago
In early 2015, Twitter discovered that the Oxford Junior Dictionary had culled dozens of words associated with the natural environment. The new edition of the dictionary — which cut terms like “acorn,”“buttercup,” and “kingfisher” in favor of adding “21st-century” terms like “broadband,” “voicemail,” “blog,” and “cut and paste”
Why the fuck would a dictionary remove those?? This makes no sense.
- pm215 5y agoBecause, as with all dictionaries except the absolutely massive complete editions, you can only put in so many words (this particular volume has 6,000 entries and is aimed at 7-8 year olds). In a related Guardian article somebody from the OUP says the selection criteria are: "acknowledging the current frequency of words in daily language of children of that age; corpus analysis; acknowledging commonly misspelled or misused words; and taking curriculum requirements into account". That is, times change and the things children are writing and reading about also change; dictionaries tend to follow, not lead.