Came across a lovely site called Save the Words today:

It’s a mission, as the name would suggest, to save words from a fate of obsolescence and abandonment purely because they’ve fallen out of fashion;

Every year hundreds of words are dropped from the dictionary, ostensibly (now, there’s a good word!) to make room for newer words. Lexicographers spend countless hours researching word usage. The general rule with words is “use it or lose it”.

It’s a worthy cause and a nice site, I’m going to adopt a word and perhaps you should too, if you’re not convinced yet perhaps these words from the FAQs will change your mind:

How do you save the words you ask, you can adopt a word (or more, however many you can commit to) and promise to use it in your daily conversations and online. The more a word is used the less likely it is to become defunct and get removed from the dictionary.

I’m still trying to choose my word – with my own handwriting I think I could find plenty of use for uglyography (bad handwriting) but then affictitious is listed, which is a word I have used from time to time and was slightly surprised to find here, so I feel I might have to plump for that one. While I mull that over, I’ve signed up for their Word a Day feature that sends you – can you guess? – a rare old word every day. If it’s good you may find on your next visit to the blog that you need a thesaurus to keep up with me!