Many words associated with Christianity have been removed from a children’s dictionary in Britain. Come on! Tell me you’re surprised.
Oxford University Press has excised words like “aisle,” “Saint,” “devil,” “bishop,” and “chapel” from its Junior Dictionary and replaced them with words like “blog,” “interdependent” and “celebrity,” says The UK Telegraph.
The publisher, of course, says they have absolutely nothing against Christianity but says the dictionary must reflect the fact that Britain is a “modern, multicultural, multifaith society.”
I love that word “modern.” Never has a word so bereft of definition carried so much weight for an ideology.
Vineeta Gupta, the head of children’s dictionaries at Oxford University Press, said: “We are limited by how big the dictionary can be – little hands must be able to handle it…When you look back at older versions of dictionaries, there were lots of examples of flowers for instance. That was because many children lived in semi-rural environments and saw the seasons. Nowadays, the environment has changed. We are also much more multicultural. People don’t go to Church as often as before. Our understanding of religion is within multiculturalism, which is why some words such as “Pentecost” or “Whitsun” would have been in 20 years ago but not now.”
Words taken out include: Abbey, aisle, altar, bishop, chapel, christen, disciple, minister, monastery, monk, nun, nunnery, parish, pew, psalm, pulpit, saint, sin, devil, and vicar.
Words put in: Celebrity, tolerant, vandalism, negotiate, interdependent, citizenship, childhood, conflict, common sense, debate, EU, drought, brainy, boisterous, cautionary tale, bilingual, bungee jumping, committee, compulsory, cope, democratic, allergic, biodegradable, emotion, dyslexic, donate, endangered, Euro.
I’ll tell you, in a world where I had to choose between those two word sets I’d pick the first one every day.
But I hope the Oxford folks are enjoying themselves in these “modern” times because with news that many native Brits are reproducing far below replacement rates while the Muslim populations are doubling themselves with each generation it won’t be long before they’re forced to remove words like “modern” and “multicultural” and replace them with “sharia” and “infidel.”
December 8, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Maybe English kids need those words more than ever, because if they want to read any history or literature of their country, they are less likely to be familiar with Pentecost and Whitsun than they are with blog.
This entire line of thought is irrational.
~Zee
December 8, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Maybe I’m just a crazy modernist, but who uses a dictionary anyway?
That’s why I had an internet put in my house.
December 8, 2008 at 4:58 pm
One more goofy act from the Nanny State, soon to be known as Britainistan.
December 8, 2008 at 5:57 pm
While they’re at it, they might consider removing more words that have become irrelevant to today’s youth:
sincerity
integrity
courage
honor
duty
responsibility
generosity
sobriety
contemplation
sacred
…and the list goes on. I have a feeling it’s going to be a very thin book. (And while we’re at it, why not reject “book” as an entry as well? Modern people don’t read.)
I certainly hope they’re adding things like “omg” and “wtf” though.
December 8, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Why remove,say, “psalm” on the one hand only to replace it with “cope” on the other?
Perhaps British subjects, while waning in interest of holy scripture, have a growing concern with liturgical vestment!
December 8, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Celebrity, tolerant, vandalism, negotiate, interdependent, citizenship, childhood, conflict, common sense, debate, EU, drought, brainy, boisterous, cautionary tale, bilingual, bungee jumping, committee, compulsory, cope, democratic, allergic, biodegradable, emotion, dyslexic, donate, endangered, Euro.
Let’s make sentences using the new words. I’ll go first.
“A CAUTIONARY TALE for the youngsters: Your CHILDHOOD, in fact your whole life, is ENDANGERED if you do not learn to COPE with the COMPULSORY TOLERANCE being foisted upon you by the editors’ “DEMOCRATIC” COMMITTEE.
Such a pity that just a little COMMON SENSE could have spared us this CONFLICT. Sadly, EMOTION is more important than reason these days.”
December 8, 2008 at 9:06 pm
Daddio,
Brilliant!
December 8, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Universities are a creation of the Church; I believe Oxford was the first university in England. Does no one in / at Oxford see an irony?
— Mack
December 8, 2008 at 10:20 pm
How about getting rid of “freedom”.
Looks like Geogre Orwell was off 25 years.
December 9, 2008 at 3:45 am
With compliments to Daddio:
Common sense, being previously an endangered commodity in the EU, today met its untimely death in Great Britain.
At Oxford, in an instance of vandalism-by-committee, any sense of continuity of the Christian heritage of Western Civilazation in Europe went the way of the plummeting Euro.
This is as John Paul II -in a previously underappreciated cautionary tale- predicted it would come to be when the EU refused over his ernest insistances to explicitly acknowledge its Christian Heritage in the preamnble to its bi-lingual (tri-lingual?) constitution.
Responsible, democratic citizenship is soon to follow in what might be described as an unsecured cultural bungee jump from the heights of London’s Tower onto the (biodegradable) ash heap of history.
Not all reactions have been negative, though. Perrenial bad-boy and boisterous celebrity Christopher Hitchens, known for his unique brand of tolerant debate techniques, greeted the list of purged Christain terms with measured glee. Said Hitchens from prepared comments during a phone interview conducted by a childhood friend: -“I had long assumed I would be unable to cope with the extended drought in [garbled]…yet, now unshackled from History’s grip on vocabulary, I feel I will be able to re-use langauge to negotiate the interdependant – dare I say dislexic? – nature of human communication in a radically new manner! Freed now from the previous compulsory, thought-based foundations of language, history, tradition, and faith, brainy chaps like me can run the cultural gamut! Oh Yes! and Please remember donate at my website: http://www.allergictotruth.co.uk“
December 9, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Perfect, anonymous. That’s what I had in mind, I just wasn’t industrious or smart enough to get them all in.
December 9, 2008 at 7:07 pm
As an adolescent, I feel compulsion to exclaim:
What’s so celebrated about celebrities?!
Why, pray tell, not replace “cautionary tale” with “anecdote” or “fable”?
The mere terms, “bungee jumping” and “common sense” are mutually exclusive.
There is, at least, some necessity for the word “childhood” in a children’s dictionary. (Was it previously absent?) But what child requires a vocabulary of pessimistic words such as “cope”, “debate”, “negotiate”, “tolerant” or indeed even “vandalism”? What joy is there in pessimism? What is childhood if knowledge of “vandalism” prerequisite for scholarly happiness?
And, being that it is England, after all, and that there is, in reality, a national (patriotic?) Church, aren’t the English shooting themselves in the foot? Perhaps they should research the definition of “hobble”.
“….Ad Deum, qui laetificat juventutem meam.”
December 9, 2008 at 8:37 pm
If I were living in England now, I’d forget about learning much English and start focusing on my Arabic, Urdu, etc…languages that will be presently most prominent in the soon to be Islamic Isles.