Forget the Children, Save the Words!
Savethewords.org is a unique site which aims to boost the exposure of some uncommon words…
Featuring such jewels as panchymagogue: “medicine purging body fluids from the body” and tetanothurm: “a cosmetic for removing wrinkles”, the site may seem geeky at first, but is pulling for a worthy cause.
Languages have been going extinct faster than ever and the global nature of the world today has ensured the steady debasement of even our own beloved English. How often do you hear the words “jussulent” or “primifluous” in daily life? Today’s youth are more likely to shriek out: “pwned” or “l33t” before they go back to playing WoW and sniffing glue…
Aside from netspeak and archaic words, regular everday spoken English has taken a beating. Upon seeing an attractive girl, I’d probably turn to my friend and say: “Dude you should’ve seen this bitch. She was fuckin’ hawt man, I mean fuk bro..but she was like, cool too, you know? I mean, fukkkkkkk….”
And Byron wept.
Perhaps its natural evolution of language, but at the same time there’s a nagging feeling that we’re just being too intellectually lazy– that all these common words are really simplified stand-ins for a myriad of more nuanced thoughts. George Orwell explained this connection between thoughts and language well in Politics and the English Language, a wonderful essay that ultimately traces the misuse, generalization and oversimplification of language to its extreme end: authoritarian political control…
Anyways, geeks of the world unite! Pull an Angelina and adopt these most reviled and forgotten of outcasts at savethewords.org. Users can sign up and “adopt” a word, sealing their duty with the following oath:
“I hereby promise to use this word in conversation and correspondence as frequently as possible to the very best of my ability.”
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