What’s an old word anyway?

Last night on Twitter, I got a link from @WoganHD to a blog post written in 2009 which talks about all the words that were removed from the Oxford Childrens Dictionary in the 2009 revision and what the replacement words were.

Wow! Some of those words just blew my mind.  The article quotes someone who says that they removed some of the natural words because of the non-rural way that everyone lives now, and words were chosen for the book based on how often children would use the words.

I’m not sure I quite agree with the last statement… not sure about you, but I’ve never heard my kids use the word “trapezium” and “colloquial”… yet spaniels has been removed!! Bizarre! Truly bizarre.

Surely kids still use the words gerbil, spaniel, devil, dandelion, bacon, elf, ivy, ox, stork… my kids do… and they read about them in their books all the time.  I just don’t get it.

Suppose I’m going to have to start teaching them how to Google properly and soon.  It’s a great pity in my opinion, because there’s nothing that quite beats looking up something in a real book, and turning the pages to find something new.