War Of Words

NPR reported readers of The Baltimore Sun objected to a recent front-page headline: "Opposing votes limn difference in race." Limn means "to describe" or "illuminate." A reader wrote in to say she'd never heard of it, and thought it "unbelievably arrogant & patronizing."

Beyond seemingly snobby, needlessly French and ineffectual headline writing, fact is there are many words in English that don't get used all that often outside of crossword puzzles and Scrabble tournaments... And all those words take up a lot of space.


Video: ABC/Nightline 9/9/10.

For an art project, a student in Britain has created a "Dictionary of Lost Words." It's filled with words that failed to make it into the Oxford English Dictionary.

There's freegan, a person who eats free food found in Dumpsters; nonversation, a pointless conversation; and wikism, supposedly factual information that is completely inaccurate.

Suffering from xenolexica?

It's the grave confusion experienced when faced with unusual words.

Filmmaker Bill Lichtenstein wrote about "Save the Words," a new web site from Oxford University Press, publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary, seeks to prevent the extinction of words that are endangered due to lack of use, which determines what in or out.

The latest edition of The New Oxford American Dictionary is out, with more than 2,000 new words and phrases, including "vuvuzela," "microblogging," "staycation" and "turducken" -- a culinary crime against nature of chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey... Catherine Soanes, head of online dictionaries for Oxford University Press, talks about the new additions.

Turducken & Vuvuzela Go Legit Audio Embed: Weekend Edition Sunday 8/22/10, Host: Rachel Martin.