Thousands of hyphens perish!
That’s right, the new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary has shed approximately 16,000 hyphens. The headline caught my eye right away and immediately makes me think about Jasper Fforde’s unique Book World as described in his Thursday Next series of novels, including The Well of Lost Plots.
The move was made based on the evolution of the written word, which … does make sense. We’re not speaking Shakespearean English these days! The written word has a certain fluidity. The hyphens removed were most often from compound nouns. Here’s the rub. (Ha, Shakespearean English!) The removal of the hyphens wasn’t uniform. Instead, we have single word or split words. But how to know which is which? Here’s a quick sample list:
Formerly hyphenated words split in two:
- fig leaf
- hobby horse
- ice cream
- pin money
- pot belly
- test tube
- water bed
Formerly hyphenated words unified in one:
- bumblebee
- chickpea
- crybaby
- leapfrog
- logjam
- lowlife
- pigeonhole
- touchline
- waterborne
I don’t know, I think I might miss some of these hyphens. RIP.
September 24th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
Reminds me of an old joke - How does she know??
I find that as I write I spontaneously create hyphenated words…just a bit of a dum-dum I guess.
Thanks for the post, looks like blogging fodder.
October 5th, 2007 at 8:45 pm
just when we’ve sorted out the hyphens, now we’ll have to contend with whether its one or two words. goodness.