Interview on Minnesota Public Radio’s “Midmorning” about how new words enter dictionaries, and how old ones are taken out. (Sep. 5, 2011)
For its 100th anniversary, the Concise Oxford English dictionary added 400 new words to its pages. Retweet, woot, sexting and jeggings are now considered real words. Experts at the Collins English Dictionary have also compiled a list of endangered words that are considered obsolete. Among them, “wittol,” a man who tolerates his wife’s infidelity. So which words should stay, and which should go?