Dictionary's Vault of Rejected Words Uncovered

Millions of failed words lie in Oxford room
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 6, 2010 7:02 AM CDT
Dictionary's Vault of Rejected Words Uncovered
"They are words which we haven't yet put in," an OED editor said. "I don't like calling them reject words because we will revisit them at some point and they may well go in."    (Shutter Stock)

Millions of words that just didn't make the cut according to the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary lie unused in a little-publicized vault owned by the Oxford University Press. The vault—whose existence was uncovered by a research student compiling a "Dictionary of Non-Words"—contains untold numbers of small cards, each bearing a word that was submitted but never approved, some of them centuries old. Newer failed words are digitized.

A senior editor denies that the words are rejects and says they still have a chance of making it into the dictionary—if people start using them. The Telegraph lists dozens of the never-made-it words the dictionary released to the researcher. They include "dringle," meaning the watermark a glass of liquid leaves on wood, "quackmire," meaning the muddy edges of a duck pond, and "wurfing", meaning surfing the Internet while at work.
(More Oxford English Dictionary stories.)

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