Words popularised by Gen Z and Gen Alpha including "skibidi", "delulu", and "tradwife" are among 6,000 new entries to the online edition of the Cambridge Dictionary over the last year, its publisher has said.
I think more interesting than new words added that I’ve heard but wouldn’t use myself would be words that they’ve decided to remove because of disuse, because I probably haven’t heard those words ever.
There are also terms like hepatectomize. Do you know that one? (…) It means to excise the liver of, it used to be in the Unabridged, but it was removed a few years ago because it’s just too rare. Now both hepatectomy and hepatectomized, the adjectival participle, they continue to be included in the Unabridged and in the Collegiate and in the merriam-webster.com dictionary, but hepatectomize, apparently no such luck anymore.
So, they do drop words, but only when they’re not used anymore. But they argue “If it’s in Shakespeare or Chaucer, people read it and will look it up”. They did drop “Neighbor-stained” though, because even those shakespeare uses it once, nobody else does.
Peter Sokolowski: And if enough people start using neighbor-stained, that will go back in too.
Emily Brewster: Yeah. Let’s not wish that though.
I wonder if the Oxford or Cambridge dictionary actually ever removes words? I mean, if you were doing research and looking at text written in old English, when you want to be able to look up a word that was no longer in use?
I think more interesting than new words added that I’ve heard but wouldn’t use myself would be words that they’ve decided to remove because of disuse, because I probably haven’t heard those words ever.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-matters-podcast/episode-61-words-dropped-from-the-dictionary
So, they do drop words, but only when they’re not used anymore. But they argue “If it’s in Shakespeare or Chaucer, people read it and will look it up”. They did drop “Neighbor-stained” though, because even those shakespeare uses it once, nobody else does.
I wonder if the Oxford or Cambridge dictionary actually ever removes words? I mean, if you were doing research and looking at text written in old English, when you want to be able to look up a word that was no longer in use?
Maybe they don’t, and just label them archaic. It’s not like they have a maximum word limit.
Maybe, like, an old dictionary.