Friday, March 24, 2006

If I could find my own dipstick...

Are you a jobernowl? Dictionary has answer.

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Ian Brookes is trying to rescue the zoozoo from extinction.

Brookes is not an environmentalist partial to the wood pigeon, but instead editor of the Chambers Dictionary, and is seeking to keep words from disappearing in the publisher's next edition which is slated for release in August.

"We've resisted the temptation for tossing words out," he said Monday at the London Book Fair.

Also on the save list are: jobernowl (blockhead), logodaedalus (someone skilled in the manipulative use of words), incompossible (incapable of co-existing) and supernaculum (to the last drop), the kinds of words typically omitted by one-volume dictionaries once they fall out of usage.

The Chambers Dictionary, published in Scotland, is favored by puzzlers, writers and language-lovers for its pithy approach, such as defining "eclair" as a cake long in shape but short in duration.

Brookes also sees a market for its antiquarian approach in a culture taken with yesteryear, evidenced by widespread enthusiasm for old buildings and genealogy.

"We've decided to provide a kind of museum of language," Brookes said.

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