How to Adopt an Antediluvian Word
Your students can prevent words like succisive, welmish or alogotrophy from fading into obscurity by adopting them through the Save the Words web site. When students visit Save the Words, they are confronted with a wall of lonely, unused words crying out for new homes. Literally. They cry out. Really. Try it.
As the Save the Words website expresses it:
Each year hundreds of words are dropped from the English language.
Old words, wise words, hard-working words. Words that once led meaningful lives but now lie unused, unloved and unwanted.
Today 90% of everything we write is communicated by only 7,000 words.
You can change all that. Help save the words!
When you adopt a word, you make a solemn vow: “I hereby promise to use this word, in conversation and correspondence, as frequently as possible to very best of my ability.”
This would be a clever and fun way to get students playing with words. After they adopt a word students could use it in a poem, in their daily work, or in class discussions.
How would you use this site in your classroom?
I’ve used this site in my teaching and kids have loved it! One year, my students “adopted” a word and used it as much as possible. I think that the best lesson learned from this site is that language is fluid and changes every day. Students don’t always see language as something to play with and/or create. Thanks for reminding me of this site!
Kind of on the same subject, I’ve been trying to make learning Catholic vocabulary fun through my blog.
http://blog.catholicfreeshipping.com/category/word-of-the-day/
Feel free to reprint, so long as I get a link back for credit!
I was a former Lit and Writing teacher myself, and still do teach Confirmation for my parish, so I do understand the importance of vocabulary building.
GBY,
Patrick