The Kids Open Dictionary has given me many opportunities to reflect on our language.
A hundred years ago, our world was much more male-centric. (I know this sounds obvious.) Here are some words that weren’t in the dictionary then: spokesperson, salesperson, and feminism.
There have also been a lot of medical developments. Again, this is obvious, but here are some words that weren’t in common usage a hundred years ago: cardiology, urology, obstetrics, and pediatrics.
Some words only make sense as an adjective referring to the past tense. Here’s an example: unforeseen.
Here’s another one: Something can be unspeakable, but we can’t really unspeak something (though we often wish we could).
By the way, today we finished the first pass of editing the word list for dictionary. [Cheer from the crowd!] For those interested, we started with the 1913 Webster dictionary. We started with 111,219 words. [That is a lot of words. Trust me; I know.] When we finished editing the list, we ended up with about 25,000 words. Many of the deletions were forms of the same word (walked, walking, etc.). Many others were words that are no longer used.
We also, of course, added some words. I suspect we have many more to add. If you find any words that you think should be deleted or added, let us know. In the meantime, we’ll be celebrating this milestone!