The Lost Words
February 10, 2018 8:03 AM   Subscribe

The Lost Words is an award-winning book illustrated by Jackie Morris (twitter) and written by Robert MacFarlane (interview). Each entry is a nature-related word, such as acorn, adder, blackberry, bluebell, dandelion, kingfisher, magpie and otter, deleted from the Oxford University Press Junior Dictionary. On the design of the book, the language of nature (by the author) and a related exhibition. A successful crowdfunding campaign by Jane Beaton means a copy of the book will be in every school in Scotland. Reviews in Shiny New Books, Goodreads, the Guardian, the New Statesman and the Washington Post. Robert's tweets frequently describe old words about nature and history.
posted by Wordshore (12 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite
 
I love Robert McFarlane. This book was such a joy to read, just all his previous ones. I’m a sucker for British nature books and my local indie bookshop inexplicably has an incredible selection. Most are titles I’ve only ever heard read on Radio 4, seen on trips to the UK, or reviewed in the Guardian. Things like that are one of the ways you can very much see the heritage of English Canada. They’ve never quite let go.
posted by Kitteh at 8:41 AM on February 10, 2018 [1 favorite]


Jackie's blog is just lovely, in general.
posted by skippyhacker at 10:06 AM on February 10, 2018 [3 favorites]


Jackie's a treasure. I followed her along the creation of this book; she and Robert both felt so deeply about the subject. It's a marvel. If you'd like to see more of her work, it's probably in the children's section if you have a well-stocked local library. But really, you probably want Tell Me a Dragon, at least, for your own library.
posted by Nancy_LockIsLit_Palmer at 2:10 PM on February 10, 2018 [1 favorite]


That was an instabuy, thank you for bringing me it.
posted by Iteki at 2:32 PM on February 10, 2018 [1 favorite]


The ideology of the deletions just seems weird to me. I mean, I can see why you might delete adder, cowslip and bluebell when making room in an abbreviated dictionary, but willow? acorn? dandelion? ivy? I've lived all my life in cities and suburbs and I've had plenty of recourse to those. Are they seriously picturing children that don't walk to school, go out for recess, or otherwise leave their houses?
posted by tavella at 4:14 PM on February 10, 2018 [4 favorites]


There is a discussion thread on the blue from three years ago on this subject, of which this comment is the most relevant.
posted by Wordshore at 4:22 PM on February 10, 2018 [3 favorites]


Robert McFarlane is a good follow on der twittergeist.
posted by sneebler at 7:36 PM on February 10, 2018 [1 favorite]


I half wonder if they were going for planned obsolescence. Certainly, among their new words, MP3 players are already all but extinct, chatroom is a hardly ever used word, and who the heck spells it voice-mail?
posted by tavella at 8:26 PM on February 10, 2018 [1 favorite]


I can also much more easily see a kid coming across the word conker and going “a what now? Better look it up!” than a chat room or indeed celebrity (one if the other words).
posted by Iteki at 2:56 AM on February 11, 2018 [2 favorites]


This looks wonderful! Thanks for posting about it.
posted by zebrabananafish at 9:04 PM on February 11, 2018 [1 favorite]


Jackie just shared this on her fb page, a video of an interpretation of bluebell.
posted by Nancy_LockIsLit_Palmer at 4:04 PM on February 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


Jackie is amused by a not glowingly positive review (by someone who probably should never leave their house to avoid encountering... anything at all).
posted by Wordshore at 2:57 AM on February 17, 2018


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