LOST FOREST WORDS. I posted here about an article by Robert Macfarlane lamenting the loss of nature words in English, as exemplified by the removal of words like “acorn” and “dandelion” from a new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary. In the Wall Street Journal (August 6-7), Tom Shippey reviewed a new book by Macfarlane: LANDMARKS. Macfarlane’s book is structured in the form of ten chapters on different kinds of terrain, each followed by a glossary of words on the subject.
Shippey lists some of the words from the chapter on forestry:
“cag” (the protruding stump of a branch), “daddock” (dead wood), “griggles” (“small apples left on the tree”), “spronky” (“having many roots”) and “slive” (the rough edge of a stump) and “snedding”. (“Snedding” is “shaving the branches off a felled tree so it can be snaked out through dense forest”.)