I read about this great website on The Guardian online the other day. It allows you to discover words which are falling out of use in English and make a contribution towards their survival.
Now, very often when you hear that you can make a contribution to a “Save the X” cause, the contribution is financial. Not so with Save the Words. You can adopt a word, pledging to use it as much as possible, or you can subscribe to their word a day email. I’ve adopted tortiloquy n. dishonest or immoral speech, as I suspect that I will have an opportunity to use it regularly.
Oh, and should you be desperate to make a financial contribution to the cause, you can order your own t-shirt with your word on them. Pretty cool in a geeky sort of way.
The Book and Biscuit 
“Tortiloquy” is a rare disappearing word whose meaning the meaning for which I could guess. Law school was good for something after all!
Seriously, though, this is a neat concept and I’m going to check the site out tonight. Thanks for the pointer!
I’ve got a new favourite- foppotee 🙂 Another that I will be applying to people liberally in every day life.
I love finding “new” old words. Every Wednesday I put one on my blog, Today, I think…
http://todayithink.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/
The joy of reading and snacking—add a nap and a catkid and you have my favorite things.
Damn, what a coincidence, a friend of mine has recommended this website a few days ago since I’m a foreign speaker and I’m always trying to expand my vocabulary…
Hi Ondrej, your friend might be winding you up- you’d be expanding your vocabulary to the extent that native English speakers might not recognise it anymore! It’s a great idea though, a word a day website for advance English learners with some quirky vocabulary. You should start one up!
That’s the problem whenever I “learn” some new word like this, I then need to carefully test it (like in an article), not to mention that I’ve been always guessing pronunciation.
I have this problem too! At least in Welsh words are phonetic, but in English I have adopted some very strange ways of saying words. Stoic is one which has worried me in the past- should it be pronounced stow-ik or stoy-ic? Mind you, I’m told I don’t pronounce tooth or ear properly either- a quirk of accent!
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