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Authors Alarmed As Oxford Junior Dictionary Drops Nature Words

Posted by Soulskill on from the sign-of-the-times dept.

Freshly Exhumed writes: Margaret Atwood, Andrew Motion, and Michael Morpurgo are among 28 authors criticizing Oxford University Press's decision to scrap a number of words associated with nature from its junior dictionary. In an open letter (PDF) released on Monday, the acclaimed writers said they are "profoundly alarmed" and urged the publisher to reinstate words cut since 2007 in the next edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary. Among words to be dropped are acorn, blackberries, and minnows.

2 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What can you expect? by _xeno_ · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, yes, but as your own link explains:

    The Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is a word or expression that has attracted a great deal of interest during the year to date.

    So it's less that they chose those words and more that we, as English speakers, chose them.

    --
    You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
  2. Small subset by jklovanc · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Oxford Junior Dictionary contains about 3% of the Oxford English Dictionary. Some words need to be swapped out to make room for words that are more relevant to the users.