[Jerome Betts]

This is an odd one. Is there no pillar of the temple immune from insidious rot?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012...-deleted-words

How long before the inevitable competition? 16 lines incorporating the words calabazilla,, svelte, balisaur, wake-up, boviander, danchi and okra?

[Gregory Dowling]

Examples of Burchfield's deleted words include balisaur, an Indian badger-like animal; the American English wake-up, a golden-winged woodpecker; boviander, the name in British Guyana for a person of mixed race living on the river banks; and danchi, a Bengali shrub. The OED is now re-evaluating words expunged by Burchfield, who died in 2004, aged 81.

"This is really shocking. If a word gets into the OED, it never leaves. If it becomes obsolete, we put a dagger beside it, but it never leaves," Ogilvie said.

As one of the comments on the article says, Sarah Ogilvie should get out more. "Really shocking"? It sounds to me as if Ogilvie is trying to turn a matter of a few mildly disputable editorial decisions (presumably Burchfield didn't feel that these words had really entered the language) into a case of rampant xenophobia, which seems unlikely, to say the least.

[John Whitworth]

The word that sprung to my attention was aardwolf. I had never heard of an aardwolf. And if you hadn't either, it is a small, insect-eating hyena, rather cuddly really. Aard means earth in some African language. I didn't know that either.

[Jerome Betts]

John, aarde is earth in Dutch and Afrikaans. Presumably the 'e' drops out in compounds like aardwolf, aardvark, and aardappel (potato). Aard without the 'e' is apparently 'nature', more or less.

I should have remembered aardvark (earth-pig) when I was having hard work finding bacon in an Alkmaar supermarket. Had to ask a Dutch lady who, fortunately, didn't tell me to vark off.

[Brian Allgar]

This seems to me a golden opportunity to outflank Jayne by putting up one of my non-winning "Rhyming Dictionary" pieces. "Aardvark" is clearly entirely on-topic.

I used to have a pet, a Russian squirrel;
With alphabets in mind, I called him “Cyril”.
I next acquired a scaly iguana,
So regal that I named her “Gloriana”;
A lark (Alauda magna - see Linnaeus)
Whose song deserved the name of “Amadeus”.
But all were eaten by my neighbour’s Persian
To whom I’ve always had a fixed aversion.

Against this cat, I needed something tougher;
I got an aardvark, bigger, stronger, rougher,
But couldn’t find a name for him that suited,
And so I bought this book, dirt cheap, car-booted.
I riffled through, with many oaths and curses,
For though it’s true that when it comes to verses
It may eliminate a lot of hard work,
It doesn’t give a single rhyme for “Aardvark”.

[David Anthony]

Brilliant, Brian.