Dictionary consigns ‘aerodrome’ to history
This article makes me think of my grandmother who when we were cold used to say “come in children you looked “starved”. I later discovered Chaucer used the term for cold aswell – no I am not so old that my Gran was his contemporary! This story fits well with this article which explains how the Collins Dictionary people think many terms I grew up with are now defunct – it explains:
“While it may have been a rare occasion that one heard the word “wittol”, it is now likely to become even more so, as it joins a number of words that have become extinct in the past year. Language experts from Collins Dictionary have compiled a list of words which have fallen out of use by tracking how often they appear.
“Wittol”, a man who tolerates his wife’s unfaithfulness, has not been used much since the 1940s. The terms “drysalter”, a dealer in certain chemical products and foods, and “aerodrome”, a term for any location from which aircraft flight operations take place, have also faded from use. Some of the vanished words are old-fashioned modes of transport such as the “cyclogiro”, a type of aircraft propelled by rotating blades, and “charabanc”, a motor coach. The words consigned to history are those whose frequency of use falls below a certain threshold.”
I fear this can increasingly also be ascribed to certain local government services and the withering on the vine of many words linked to transport seems to resonate particularly strongly in terms of my correlation between extinct and endangered words and extinct and endangered services!!