Saving pamphagous and pigritude

English is spreading like some gigantic lexical blob and suffocating all living languages. Well, that's what we're told, anyway. To use a colourful English proverb, "Throw enough mud, and some will stick." Actually, according to the Oxford Dictionary of Idioms, it was Niccolò Machiavelli who said that, and he was more Florentine than Mancunian.

If English is expanding, it is contracting, too, and lots of English words are dying out. Hardly anyone uses "pamphagous" (eating everything), "squiriferous" (having the character or qualities of a gentleman) or "pigritude" (laziness) anymore. In an attempt to save them from extinction, the Oxford University Press has launched Save the Words, a wonderfully interactive website where people are invited to adopt a lexeme. During the coming long nights of winter, this could be an interesting after-work activity for a "jobler" (a person who does small jobs).

Words are important and, in my eyes, anyone who saves one from death is "isangelous" (like an angel).