Wally, boogie, betrothed, do you know what they mean?
- Published
According to the dictionary, extinct means something that no longer exists and has no living representative
A new survey has found that a list of 20 words could go extinct in the next few years because they're going out of fashion with young people in Britain.
Some at-risk words include wally, boogie and betrothed.
The survey gave 2,000 adults a list of words then asked which ones they had heard before.
The 300 people who took part in the survey were aged between 18-30 and researchers worked out which words are going extinct by the number of them who didn't know what certain words meant.
Wally means a foolish person
Boogie means to dance
Betrothed is the person someone has promised to marry, who they are engaged to
Wally, boogie, betrothed, have you heard of these words, or do they look like another language to you?
Words going out of fashion
Collins English Dictionary experts are also doing some research into the decline in usage of words.
They're using a database which tracks how much words are used over time, and they discovered that the usage of certain words has gone down by a massive 90% in the last 30 years.
However, some words were more popular... Nincompoop was 373% more popular now than 30 years ago due to it being used as an insult on social media!
A spokesperson for the company which conducted the survey, said: "Our research shows that many words are simply losing favour, with millennials having no idea of their meaning."
So do you know what they mean? Take our quiz to find out!
If you cannot see the quiz, click here.
- Published30 January 2018
- Published15 October 2019
