8 Food Words Rejected (For Now) By The Oxford English Dictionary

Serious Eats' Erin Zimmer pointed out an article from the Telegraph about millions of "non words" rejected by the Oxford University Press as "unsuitable" for inclusion in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). From the Telegraph:

They now lie in a vault in Oxford alongside millions of other unused words which are written on 6in by 4in cards and stored alphabetically in 50 huge filing cabinets. [...]

Fiona McPherson, senior editor of the OED's new words group, denied the words are ''rejects'' and said they have every chance of being printed in the future. She said: ''They are words which we haven't yet put in. I don't like calling them reject words because we will revisit them at some point and they may well go in. They are not yet considered suitable for the dictionary because there's not enough evidence that people are using them."

Several of the words have food connotations, so in the interest of staying at the forefront of our food & drink lexicon, here are eight food-related words languishing in a vault without Oxford-sanctioned word status.

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"Dringle"

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comments(34)

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This Would-Be Food Word

Rank #2  |  Average: 4

Unnecessary. That's a WORD!

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Comments

[mstoki]

03:20 PM on 08/26/2010

What are thouse yummy looking things in slide #7- Smushables? I want to bite one lol!

[Jason Coopman]

11:13 PM on 08/21/2010

The phrase "smushable" hurt my head.

[Ozark Homesteader]

01:07 PM on 08/20/2010

Wasn't "locavore" (with the correct spelling) one of the OED's "words of the year" in 2007? Seriously, wasn't it? Oh--I see someone else has already pointed out your error. LocavorE is the word, and it's in the OED, unless we're both wrong.

[lakat]

04:02 PM on 08/19/2010

All of these words are artificial, contrived and unnecessary. Hate them.

[roydoe]

09:48 PM on 08/21/2010

All words are con-trivial

[lakat]

11:38 AM on 08/22/2010

Well why do they call it a 'door'? Or a 'window'. If those words were contrived in the way I meant (and you got it, you're just being difficult) a door would be called a 'go-through' and a window would be called a 'look through'.

[Rena Lanford]

09:21 PM on 08/17/2010

All but the last can burn in word hell. "Spatulate" is exempt only because it sounds out in a bad Cockney accent to me.

[McHale Ann Haiman]

05:07 AM on 08/16/2010

I think that all these words should be considered words if E.V.O.O. is. A) not technically a word, it is an abbreviation (like it is so freakin' frakin' hard to say olive oil! We get it, you only use "the best"). B) Rachael Ray is the devil.

[KurtMichaelFriese]

09:25 AM on 08/15/2010

Yet "locavore" an Oxford AMERICAN Dictionary word of the year a couple years back

http://blog.oup.com/2007/11/locavore/

[bnyb]

02:55 PM on 08/13/2010

Hold on now, 'freegan' is a good, honest to god word! What else would you call them?

[SlurmsMcKenzie]

07:25 PM on 08/14/2010

Homeless?

[Ray Hussein Kinserlow]

09:27 PM on 08/12/2010

phrase of the year: "top kill"

[WhereIF]

06:40 PM on 08/12/2010

These are not real words, they are Sniglets...

[WhereIF]

06:45 PM on 08/12/2010

Well, I guess, to be fair, a Sniglet is defined as, "Any word that doesn't appear in the dictionary, but should." :-)

[dauphin]

06:29 PM on 08/12/2010

Norm McDonald used to have a skit where he would explain the definition of words for some odd action or object. One of these was about the dark red crust that forms on the bottle of ketchup. It is called "flen".

[dauphin]

06:33 PM on 08/12/2010

Sorry, it was Rich Hall, not Norm McDonald. They look kind of the same.

[lakat]

04:03 PM on 08/19/2010

Rich Hall, married to Julia Louie Dreyfus

[LMPE]

04:49 PM on 08/12/2010

"Compassionate conservative" should get rejected, since it's proved to be an oxymoron.

[dsws]

01:40 PM on 08/12/2010

"Griefer" is unambiguously a word. Locavore is a word, but locavor is just a misspelling.

Most of the rest are just lame attempts to be cute, with zero chance of ever becoming words.

[xtiangodloki]

01:37 PM on 08/12/2010

I like how the Locavor person drives a BMW. Okay, so the Z3s are made in the US, but you figured the person would also find a US made car by an US automaker as well.

[Seescout]

01:33 PM on 08/12/2010

Rightly rejected (by whatever name) as mere lightweight cleverness in search of meaning. They make decent sniglets though, if anyone remembers those ...