Words that fell out of favour

Aerodrome and charabanc are among the words presumed to have become extinct in the past year, according to new British research.

Collins Dictionary experts have compiled a list of words which have fallen out of use by tracking how often they appear.

Other words on the list include “wittol” – a man who tolerates his wife’s unfaithfulness, which has not been much used since the 1940s. The terms “drysalter”, a dealer in certain chemical products and foods, and “alienism”, the study and treatment of mental illness, have also faded from use. Some of the vanished words are old-fashioned modes of transport such as the “cyclogiro”, a type of aircraft propelled by rotating blades, and “charabanc”, a motor coach.

The “stauroscope”, an optical instrument for studying the crystal structure of minerals under polarised light, is also no longer used.

Ruth O’Donovan, Asset Development Manager at Collins Language Division in Glasgow, said: “We track words using a very large database of language which is a very large collection of various texts from spoken and written language, including books, newspapers and magazines so we can track language change over time.

“We track new words but we can also track for the frequency of existing words and when they get below a certain threshold we see them as being obsolete, though they may be used in very specialist circumstances.

“Such words are in our largest dictionary but we’ve categorised them as obsolete, as although they go out of general use they are still of interest to historians so it’s useful to have them in the dictionary. But we would exclude them from our smaller dictionaries.”

Other words which have passed out of use include “supererogate” which means to do or perform more than is required.

While “succedaneum”, meaning something used as a substitute, also no longer trips off the modern tongue.

Neither does “woolfell”, the skin of a sheep or similar animal with the fleece still attached.