These words are just not useful or used anymore
by: Len Rome
Posted: Nov 12, 2020 / 01:09 PM EST
Updated: Nov 12, 2020 / 01:09 PM EST
(WYTV) – We know that dictionaries add new words every year and they take out a few here and there — not as many as they put in, though.
So why does a dictionary drop a word? And how?
The English language is evolving and changing all the time, and some words simply become obsolete.
Dictionary editors decide which words make it into the dictionary and which ones are ready for deletion.
But many words marked for deletion from the print editions will remain in online dictionaries.
Here are some examples from the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. Gone are:
- Vitamin G: It now goes by its new name — riboflavin.
- Hodad: Comes from the 1960s and basically means someone pretending to be a surfer dude. He doesn’t surf, he just carries the board to look the part.
- Frutescent: An adjective meaning “like a shrub.”
- Sternforemost: A ship moving backward. It’s an old nautical term from the 1800s.
- Snollygoster: From the 19th century. It’s a politician who wins by voter fraud — totally unscrupulous.
These words are just not useful or used anymore.
A 2019 petition with 30,000 signatures called for the Oxford English Dictionary to remove sexist language and definitions. Oxford said, “We’re working on it.”
Have you ever wondered how a word gets into the dictionary?
Does one person decide or does it have to go through a number of people before being granted permission to be published?
In this article, we will be looking at how a word gets into the dictionary.
So, how does it get into the dictionary then?
To put it simply a word gets into the dictionary when it becomes a popularly used word.
New words, such as slang and abbreviations are added to the dictionary once they start to appear across a substantial amount of sources and are regularly spoken.
Once a word is commonly used and there is an understanding of a common meaning it can be considered to be added to the dictionary.
The process is not instant though and can take years to appear in the dictionary.
Who puts a word in the dictionary?
The name of someone who puts together words in a dictionary is a lexicographer.
A lexicographer will monitor the usage of a new word, across printed material, online, and spoken word.
Firstly they collect information about where the word was written, printed, or heard alongside a contextual meaning.
From this, a database of research is created and researchers actively seek the use of the word across different backgrounds.
Once adequate evidence has been collated and a solid meaning is found, the word can be put forward to be printed in the latest edition of the dictionary.
The Oxford English Dictionary is updated four times a year.
Is there just one dictionary?
There is more than just one dictionary, but in English, the Oxford English dictionary is the most reliable and well established.
Oxford dictionaries have been around for a very long time, containing around 600,000 words and 3 million quotations.
When Oxford embarked on creating their first dictionary, they estimated that it would take around 10 years to complete.
The word “ant” was reached after five hard-working years and they realized it was an ambitious task.
They began work in August 1879 and it wasn’t until 1928 that the final volume was published, taking them almost 50 years to complete.
Can a word be taken out of the dictionary?
It is very uncommon for a word to be removed from the dictionary.
Oxford English dictionaries claim that they have never removed a word from their dictionaries.
Instead, if a word has become outdated or the meaning has developed or changed the word will be labeled as obsolete.
The concept of the dictionary is to be a record of all words that have ever existed in the language it is documenting.
For example, if you are reading a book from 1920 and there is a word you don’t recognize, you can use the dictionary to find out.
Why was the dictionary invented?
The desire to record language has been around for thousands of years with the first-ever non-alphabetical dictionary being written in 1582 by Richard Mulcaster.
This dictionary contained 8,000 English words but the book only contained what were considered to be complex words.
Later the first full English dictionary was written in 1604 by Robert Cawdrey. These first books were documents of language and the words used at the time.
The idea was to record the English language with word meanings so there was an ultimate record that everyone could have access to.
Much later in 1857, the Philological Society of London decided there should be a record of all words that have been used in the English language since the 12th Century.
This was when the idea of the Oxford English Dictionaries was born.
Are more words added nowadays than before?
On average between 500-1000 words are added to the Oxford dictionary every year.
It might feel like more words are added to the dictionary nowadays than compared with the 20th Century, but this isn’t necessarily the case.
One possibility is that as our connections and communications have developed, our ability to identify new words has become easier, and therefore it could appear that there are more new words today.
In conclusion, any word you can imagine could be added to the dictionary, it just needs to become popular first.
Once a word is commonly used across a variety of platforms by a diverse group of people it can then be considered for entering into the dictionary.
It also has to have an established meaning, so it can take years for this to become clear.
I am creating a code where I need to take a string of words, convert it into numbers where hi bye hi hello
would turn into 0 1 0 2
. I have used dictionary’s to do this and this is why I am having trouble on the next part. I then need to compress this into a text file, to then decompress and reconstruct it into a string again. This is the bit I am stumped on.
The way I would like to do it is by compressing the indexes of the numbers, so the 0 1 0 2
bit into the text file with the dictionary contents, so in the text file it would have 0 1 0 2
and {hi:0, bye:1, hello:3}
.
Now what I would like to do to decompress or read this into the python file, to use the indexes(this is how I will refer to the 0 1 0 2
from now on) to then take each word out of the dictionary and reconstruct the sentence, so if a 0 came up, it would look into the dictionary and then find what has a 0
definition, then pull that out to put into the string, so it would find hi
and take that.
I hope that this is understandable and that at least one person knows how to do it, because I am sure it is possible, however I have been unable to find anything here or on the internet mentioning this subject.
1 READING
a Look at the dictionary definition. What do you think
the missing word is?
is
a person who puts metal in your mouth
and takes coins out of your pocket.
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Новые вопросы по предмету Английский язык
What is the answer to the Word spelled incorrectly in the dictionary Puzzle? The right answer to the Puzzle is “Incorrectly.” As per the puzzle, the Word that is spelled incorrectly in the dictionary is “Incorrectly.” This particular riddle is to check your thinking & grammatical skill.
Contents
- 1 What word is spelled incorrectly in every single dictionary?
- 2 Which English word is supposed to be Spelt incorrectly?
- 3 Is Spelt incorrectly?
- 4 What starts with E and ends with E and has one letter?
- 5 What is the most misspelled word in the dictionary?
- 6 Which English word is always read wrong?
- 7 What are the 10 most misspelled words?
- 8 Is it spelled GREY or gray?
- 9 Which one of the following word is correctly spelt?
- 10 Which of the below given word is spelt correctly?
- 11 What has one eye but Cannot see anything?
- 12 What gets bigger the more you take away?
- 13 What goes up and down without moving?
- 14 What is the most misspelled word of 2021?
- 15 What is the hardest spelling bee word?
- 16 What are 5 commonly misspelled words?
- 17 Is Understanded a word?
- 18 What is the meaning of Spelt word?
- 19 Which is the hardest word in English?
- 20 Why is spelling in English so difficult?
What word is spelled incorrectly in every single dictionary?
in every single dictionary in print. Sometimes the question is worded: “What is the only word that is spelled wrong in the dictionary?” In that case, the trick answer is “wrong.”
Which English word is supposed to be Spelt incorrectly?
Oxford Says These 17 Words Are Spelled Wrong Most Often (Out of More Than 2 Billion)
Correct Spelling | Common Misspelling |
---|---|
existence | existance |
foreseeable | forseeable |
harass | harrass |
interrupt | interupt |
Is Spelt incorrectly?
It’s true; the American English past tense form is spelled. In other varieties of English, both spelled and spelt are common. So, if you’re in the United States, you would probably write it like this: The past tense of the verb “spell” can be spelled in two ways.
What starts with E and ends with E and has one letter?
Originally Answered: What starts with E and ends in E and only has one letter? The answer is envelope because it starts and ends with E, and there is one letter inside.
What is the most misspelled word in the dictionary?
According to Google Trends’ list of most misspelled words by state, our attempts to spell “beautiful” can get pretty ugly. “Beautiful” tops the list of hard-to-spell words in a whopping 11 states, by far the most of any word on the list.
Which English word is always read wrong?
Interesting question. Actually, you have mentioned a obviously relative word in your question. The word “READ” is often read wrongly.
What are the 10 most misspelled words?
List of 10 most commonly misspelled words:
Correct spelling | Incorrect spelling |
---|---|
Accommodate | Acommodate |
Separate | Seperate |
Necessary | neccessary |
Cemetery | Cemetary |
Is it spelled GREY or gray?
Gray and grey are both common spellings of the color between black and white. Gray is more frequent in American English, whereas grey is more common in British English. The varying usage of both grey and gray extends to specialized terms such as animal species (gray/grey whale) and scientific terms (gray/grey matter).
Which one of the following word is correctly spelt?
The word ‘Commission‘ is correctly spelled.
The standard spelling of the word is ‘commission.
Which of the below given word is spelt correctly?
“Facsimile” is the correct word.
What has one eye but Cannot see anything?
needle
The needle has an opening at one end which is the eye of it. Despite that eye, the needle cannot see. Therefore, What has one eye but cannot see answer is a needle.
What gets bigger the more you take away?
HOLE
The answer to this riddle is just one word. The correct answer is ‘HOLE‘. A hole in any kind of substance, may it be cloth, wall, wood or anything else, will only get bigger and bigger if you keep taking away more from it.
What goes up and down without moving?
The answer is: Stairs.
What is the most misspelled word of 2021?
quarantine
The most commonly misspelled word in 2021 was “quarantine,” perhaps to no one’s surprise. Surprisingly, the most misspelled word in three states was “every” with the most common misspelling being “evary.”
What is the hardest spelling bee word?
The 25 Toughest Winning Words Ever Spelled In The National Spelling Bee
- Xanthosis. Year: 1995.
- Euonym. Year: 1997.
- Succedaneum. Year: 2001.
- Autochthonous. Year: 2004.
- Appoggiatura. Year: 2005.
- Ursprache. Year: 2006.
- Laodicean. Year: 2009. Pronunciation: lay-ah-duh-SEE-un.
- Cymotrichous. Year: 2011. Pronunciation: sahy-MAH-truh-kus.
What are 5 commonly misspelled words?
Documented list of common misspellings
- absence – absense, absentse, abcense, absance.
- acceptable – acceptible.
- accidentally/accidently – accidentaly.
- accommodate – accomodate, acommodate.
- achieve – acheive.
- acknowledge – acknowlege, aknowledge.
- acquaintance – acquaintence, aquaintance.
- acquire – aquire, adquire.
Is Understanded a word?
(obsolete) Simple past tense and past participle of understand.
What is the meaning of Spelt word?
Spelt is a grain that’s closely related to wheat.The word spelt is as ancient as the grain itself, going back to Proto-Indo-European language and the word spel, meaning “to split or break off,” possibly because of the way spelt husks split during threshing.
Which is the hardest word in English?
7 most difficult English words that will let you forget what you wanted to say
- Rural.
- Sixth.
- Sesquipedalian.
- Phenomenon.
- Onomatopoeia.
- Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
- Worcestershire.
Why is spelling in English so difficult?
There are far more spellings for a sound than pronunciations for letters.There is only one way to pronounce the word spelt by the letters s-e-e-p. But there are several ways of writing the sounds /si:p/, e.g. seep, seap, sepe, siep, and seip.