Times Online gave its readers a chance to save their favourite word by voting for it at the Comment Central weblog. (The voting is now closed and the results will be announced shortly, but it is still fun to read about it.)
Apparently, '... dictionary compilers at Collins have decided that the word list for the forthcoming edition of its largest volume is embrangled with words so obscure that they are linguistic recrement. Such words, they say, must be exuviated abstergently to make room for modern additions that will act as a roborant for the book.' (You can read more of that on their website -- below)
These are words they are trying to save:
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
