The English language has over a million words - should we cull out some of the less-used ones?

The Oxford English Dictionary updates every year.

It contains two sections at the beginning of each new edition.

The first is a section for new word additions,

and the second is for words that have been discarded

or eliminated for that particular year

because they have fallen out of use.

They keep track of words

using editors and contributors.

They consist of writers, philologists,

English professors, that kind of thing.

J. R. R. Tolkien used to be one of them.

It's kinda sad though.

Some of the words they discard

are really pretty cool..

http://www.brownielocks.com/words.html

Avatrol - A bastard

Haha..

Who would decide what words were useless? If the words are not used, it's as if they don't exist, anyway, so what does it matter whether they are officially eliminated by some fool(s) who has the time to research every dictionary available to find never-used words. Besides, I just may want to use some forgotten words, as I do from time to time, just to watch people act as if they understood me. Oh--and some of your examples make no sense, so it is clear you really dont understand some of the (very simple) word replacement examples you give. "Quiet" is not the same as "silent;" we

need both. A car's engine can run quietly, but it's running, so it's not silent, (which is the absence of

noise). I can speak quietly, but I can't speak silently. A car going ninety miles an hour is going fast; it is not going quick. Then there's "quip," a remark or comeback, commonly involving humor, but a witticism requires cleverness and intelligence, with a subtle humor. Sorry, but meaning matters; many words are simply not interchangeable.

For every word, there's someone who uses it. If

there really is no one who uses a word, well, we

don't need to do anything, it's already gone. The

biggest problem seems to be how big the dictionaries

are getting, but that can be solved in a manner of ways.

If we get rid of words, new ones will just keep

coming, as you say, so why bother?

Why would you feel the need to "keep track" of all the words or to "keep the language manageable"? It doesn't hurt you. And if some specialists in some field that you don't care about need and use some words you don't know, is that a problem for you?

Wouldn't you like to compare how much our understanding has changed .... I would love to see how many 'olden' day words have been taken out... and how we have been programmed with the addition of new words... I would love to lay my hands on a very, very, very old dictionary... and am presently looking for one...Personally, I am saddened, as I feel, we have lost much of our identity... in the passage that took our elder's words away...

Most of us, don't see aspects of this, that things are purposely being changed, dropped, hidden from view, and I wonder what is behind this, this goes deeper than we know.

It's a language it doesn't even matter if new words keep being created and how would you eliminate a word anyway that's still not gonna stop ppl from using them.

You don't need to keep track of all the words. There are dictionaries and thesauruses that do it for you.

And which words should we cull? Just because you use some of them less than others doesn't mean that others use them in the same frequency that you do.

You can't eliminate a word from the vernacular. Languages evolve over time and the less used words naturally "cull" themselves out. Look at old English for example. Verily I say unto you, thee doth not speaketh old English do ye?

If nobody needs or wants to use the word, then nobody will use it, and it will "eliminate" itself.

Otherwise, though, what authority would order and enforce the elimination of a word? The Emperor, maybe?

Yeah, that Urban Dictionary has a meaning for every letter and any combinations thereof. Let's do away with homonyms so I won't cringe so much at some of these questions and answers.