Fun with words

website: www.savethewords.orgMULOMEDIC, gelicide, blateration. Chances are your word processor would underline them with a red squiggle.

They are, however, three of the offerings at Save The Words. The project was launched by Oxford Dictionary to rescue obscure words. The website lets you “adopt” words and keep them alive. The adoption contract reads, “I promise to use this word, in conversation and correspondence, as frequently as possible to the very best of my ability”.

This is no frivolous exercise in verbiage. The words are not without meaning. Mulomedic is for instance related to the medical care of mules. Gelicide is frost and blateration is chatter.

According to Oxford Dictionary, the project comes at a desperate time when 90 per cent of what we write is communicated by just 7,000 words.