"Dictionary of Worthless Words: 3,000 Words to Stop Using Now"

Right on, AnWulf! This book should be read and taught from in the hallowed halls of learning. By the way, great byspells!

"Take the word "dictionary", a word all you Anglish fans studiously avoid and probably think of as being somehow "foreign". It has in fact been in use in English since about 1520, rather longer than "wordbook"(1590s), and also rather longer than Europeans have permanently been in North America."

Isn't this a "judgement" of a word founded on how it came into English long ago? Why is it okay for "foreign" words that came into English after its founding okay, but new English words - made out of "native" (here Germanic) words/wordbits - not okay if they come into the tongue later than the borrowed word? More HUMBUG anyone?

"DICTIONARY" > is a fremd word from Latin. It means "book of word meanings." Odd how true English words have to be brooked to tell what the fremd word means, right?

"And I have to say that the use of words like "othersome" simply sound twee to me."

Talk about boorishly "pretentious" hued with a bit of British wit and drollery! Anyone else one call HUMBUG here?! LOL

"continuous" < L. continuus "uninterrupted" (< L. interruptus "unbroken") - is an unneeded ink-horn. There are many, many ways to say "unbroken length of time" in English.

"Meanwhile I'm going back to real English, as it seems a rational conversation is impossible here - I tried but all I get is preached at by the faithful. I respect your knowledge in Old English, but not your disdain for the natural language and vocabulary spoken by the vast majority of English speakers."

What is the "real English" of which you speak? Globalish (World English)? That can be barely seen as English. Academia is guilty of watering-down English for the swarms of folks in the World that do not know any better. Your whole, "everyone else is doing it, so it's right" whitewash is utter balderdash.

Here, we moot openly about a great many things having to to with English. All are welcome, but don't think that hearts and minds can be so easily swayed with a few lofty words and mainstream beliefs and ways of thinking.

To put forth that all here are "irrational," is wholly ill-willed, benighted and unwelcome.

Today's English did not take shape as "naturally" as you seem to think. That is one of the things that it seems those here are keenly aware of.

@AnWulf: "The latinates are a shibboleth. A way of saying, "Hey, look at me, I know these 'pretentious' words!""

Hear, Hear!

What would be the outcome of Englishing writings of law?

MORTGAGE word for word means "Death Wage." So, buy a house and work to pay it off until you die!

[E. Wage, Gage

Haughty Ink-Horn of the Day

CONTUMACIOUS (yuck!) - Instead say, in good English, headstrong, pigheaded, stubborn, unyielding, willful, untoward, froward, balky, among others.

"...insulting to British spelling."

The truth hurts. One of the biggest gripes folks learning English have is that the way words are spelled. It is downright awful.

Who or what is to blame? I think everyone here knows.

My bad! "Academia" might not say 'racist', since the word race is likely from a low-brow Germanic tongue called Lombardic (see raiza, OHG reiza, ON rīta "line" -> It. razza)

So, instead maybe "intolerant" and "prejudiced." "Instantly", an "abundance" of "contemptuous, imperious," and "just supercilious sentiment necessarily levied" against those "dispassionate" of the "foreign language influences" and the "vanquishment, subjugation, appropriation," and "annexing" of the English "language, n'est-ce pas?"

[all fremd words in ""]

Too cheeky? ;-)