A computer model that tracks the development of the English language thinks that the words bad, stick, guts, and squeeze are likely to become extinct in the near future. Of course, we’re talking about English’s near future, and so the scale you need to keep in mind is tens of thousands of years. I, we, two, and three are the oldest words in the language.
Meanwhile, the fastest-changing words are projected to die out and be replaced by other words much sooner.
For example, “dirty” is a rapidly changing word; currently there are 46 different ways of saying it in the Indo-European languages, all words that are unrelated to each other. As a result, it is likely to die out soon in English, along with “stick” and “guts”.
Verbs also tend to change quite quickly, so “push”, “turn”, “wipe” and “stab” appear to be heading for the lexicographer’s chopping block.
(Via. Thanks to Original Monique for pointing it out.)
Hopefully “stab” is replaced by “shank”
Somehow, I can’t see “I’ve got a shanking pain in my side” cutting it (pardon the pun).
As long as people get stabbed with knives that are stuck badly in the gut; where the killer pushes the knife in, turns it and then runs off – squeezing the blood out of his shirt and wiping his hands… I can’t see these words disappearing.
Unless, of course, the newspapers that run those sorts of stories all fold. Then I could see it.
Can’t we phase out the word “moist” instead? And computer models don’t “think”, unless… uh, oh.
I always thought “boffo” would be the first to go.
I heard this on KUOW yesterday. Pretty interesting, though I don’t understand how another language’s word for “wipe” would somehow supercede ours, or how another English synonym would push it out of use (or “push,” or the others).
in the future robots will keep everything clean. you wont recognize dirt. and if you want to give someone a stab wound you just push a button and your robots make one with a force ray or whatever with no actual stabbing. everyone will know what porn means though
“Tens of thousands” is overshooting the mark a bit, since the English language hasn’t yet had its two thousandth birthday. “Hundreds” is a closer estimate, or maybe just “tens.”
I could see stick, but personally I expect that when the Canadian Empire rewrites the dictionaries most of the American versions will go by the wayside in 2250.
Canada? Never heard of it.
This is just tragic! We have to do something to save these words! Doesn’t anyone care??????
(hee hee)
How can “near future” possibly mean tens of thousands? That makes no sense at all. That would be many times its entire history…
Is stick as a verb or stick as a noun on the endangered word list?
Maybe with increased technological advances in global communication most of the world in a few hundred years will be speaking Esperanto.
Knowing these words are endangered makes me want to use them more. Especially “guts”. I love that word.
@7 “everyone will know what porn means though”
Stabbing the cat?
How about “Dude”? Can we get rid of “Dude”?
What’s up with moist?
I heard a linguist saying the word for “water” in many different languages and they all sounded remarkably alike. Must be a very old word as well.
Actually, the word “orange” goes back about 5,000 years (originally the Sanskrit “naranja.” The final “a” in Sanskrit isn’t pronounced. So over many years, “a naranja” became “an orange.” It’s the same word in almost every language.
I’m thinking “dialing” would be going sooner than those.
Seems awfully hard to predict these things since modern English is what, 600 years old? Maybe?
I happen to have a well-worn vinyl copy of East Side Story by Squeeze in my record collection. It’s been sticking it out there, deep in the guts of my apartment, for about 17 years now. I’ve kept it that long because East Side Story is, pardon my French, one bad motherfucker of an LP record.
So if anyone wants to credibly claim that “the words bad, stick, guts, and squeeze are likely to become extinct in the near future,” first they’re gonna hafta burglarize my apartment, for the purposes of destroying the last remaining evidence of the existence of the band named Squeeze.
And in order to do that, they’re gonna hafta make it past the pit bulls, the python, and the sulphuric acid mote.
In other words, this academically-trained linguist hereby calls bullshit on that.
@17 Say it over and over, and realize the those nasty vowels never make it out of your mouth. they get stuck in there, and never come out, and rot. and make you sick and gross.
“Maybe with increased technological advances in global communication most of the world in a few hundred years will be speaking Esperanto.”
lololololololololololol.
yeah. try english.