English Words on the Endangered List

julieannpaladin:frannyandzooey:xyzprincess:noraleah:

Words not in common use — or even uncommon use — embrangle us.  They make us feel lost in caduicity, perhaps even oppugnant with our ignorance.

But in my humble, multiple-English degree opinion, they don’t deserve a fate so niddering as to be tossed out like recrement!  Must we vilipend them simply because we do not understand them?  (And please note, dear readers, I speak not only from indignant muliebrity!  Although there is that.)

Thankfully, a campaign in the UK vaticinates a reversal of the malison of these rare words.

Won’t you do your part?  Bring these words forth like a periapt for the agrestic masses?  I think you shall find the use of them abstergent for olid modern life.

The list of words that Collins dictionary compilers have threatened to leave out of their next edition if they do not stage a dramatic comeback include:

Abstergent Cleansing or scouring

Agrestic Rural; rustic; unpolished; uncouth

Apodeictic Unquestionably true by virtue of demonstration

Caducity Perishableness; senility

Caliginosity Dimness; darkness

Compossible Possible in coexistence with something else

Embrangle To confuse or entangle

Exuviate To shed (a skin or similar outer covering)

Fatidical Prophetic

Fubsy Short and stout; squat

Griseous Streaked or mixed with grey; somewhat grey

Malison A curse

Mansuetude Gentleness or mildness

Muliebrity The condition of being a woman

Niddering Cowardly

Nitid Bright; glistening

Olid Foul-smelling

Oppugnant Combative, antagonistic or contrary

Periapt A charm or amulet

Recrement Waste matter; refuse; dross

Roborant Tending to fortify or increase strength

Skirr A whirring or grating sound, as of the wings of birds in flight

Vaticinate To foretell; prophesy

Vilipend To treat or regard with contempt