The Lost Words: Reclaiming the Language of Nature

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July 23, 2019

a project of ServiceSpace

I dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can.

- Jack Gilbert -

The Lost Words: Reclaiming the Language of Nature

"In early 2015, when the 10,000-entry Oxford children's dictionary dropped around fifty words related to nature -- words like fern, willow, and starling -- in favor of terms like broadband and cut and paste, some of the worlds most prominent authors composed an open letter of protest and alarm at this impoverishment of children's vocabulary and its consequent diminishment of children's belonging to and with the natural world. Among them was one of the great nature writers of our time: Robert MacFarlane a rare descendent from the lyrical tradition of Rachel Carson and Henry Beston...Troubled by this loss of vital and vitalizing language, MacFarlane teamed up with illustrator and children's book author Jackie Morris, who had reached out to him to write an introduction for a sort of wild dictionary she wanted to create as a counterpoint to Oxford's erasure. Instead, MacFarlane envisioned something greater. The Lost Words: A Spell Book was born." { read more }