Words on the Endangered List

David Ouellet stunned me with a list of words chosen for his Wonderword* puzzle theme “Words Going Extinct.” Among those words was “read.” Read? No, not possible, I thought. It must be a mistake. Even if, worse case ever, books vanished forever, will we not still be “reading” digitations—codes, images, whatever? I reject the conclusion that read is disappearing from English.

On the other hand, there were many words listed I had never heard or seen before: Agrestic, Chroous, Dalles, Esurient, Fubsy, Skirr, Sprent and Ubtceare. I willingly abandon them all to the obscurity of obsolescence. Although, I hold some reluctance for “fubsy” just because I like the fun it presents to the ear and eye.

Some words being shunted out of currency are truly victims of progress and history. “Tuppence” (two cent coin) is no longer necessary when the world is debating keeping the penny (one cent coin). Joule seems to be falling into disuse because it has become too finite in a world of mega-this, and mega-that.

A few others may have always been considered colloquial, but with the expansion of easy communication, these are also falling by the wayside. These include varmint, parley, canny, quaff, wheedle and yammer.

Victims of progress and the passing of some fad or culture-specific words are discos, hogan (I wonder if the Navajos would agree) and leeboard (though this is still used in Friesland on boats for tourists). Words favored by Shakespeare and poets supposedly on the chopping board are arras, bade, hark, morrow and yore. Most of these will still linger, I believe, in crossword puzzles and so, will not entirely disappear into the dust of libraries and archives. So ends my series on words becoming obsolete.

*Source – newspaper puzzle, –Nov 22, 2021—WONDERWORD, by David Quellet. Theme: Words Going Extinct