It seems the internet and text messaging is making it's mark on the English dictionary. Or rather, it's losing a mark; the hyphen to be precise. I discovered an article on the BBC web site which talks about 16,000 words that have lost their hyphens in the latest edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, changing them into either a single word or two seperate words. Here are some of the previously hyphend words that have changed:
Becoming two words:
- Fig leaf
- Hobby horse
- Ice cream
- Pin money
- Pot belly
- Test tube
Becoming one word:
- Leapfrog
- Pigeonhole
- Bumblebee
- Chickpea
- Crybaby
- Leapfrog
- Logjam
1 comment:
Nice post!Personally i don't think hyphens are needed in today's fast paced world.Everything's changing in today's world!Why not the usage of hyphens?No serious problem will occur if hyphens are not used.As long as people use the apostrophe symbol correctly,the language won't face a threat.Sadly,many native speakers of the language make this mistake.
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