8 nature words that defy the children's dictionary by Griselda Heppel
Here’s a nice bit of irony. What do the following have in common? "Bluebells" in "Beech" woods Ash No more "larking" around Bluebell Fern Hazel Heather Ivy Lark Willow If you’ve been following the row over the Oxford Junior Dictionary that’s been rumbling on since 2007, and now just blown up again, you’ll assume the answer is that these are some of the dozens of ‘nature’ words omitted from the dictionary, on the grounds that they are no longer relevant to children’s lives. And you’d be right. Together with beech, heron, kingfisher, buttercup, conker, mistletoe, nectar, newt, otter , and a number of other words brimming with bright colours, textures and the sheer, quivering life of the natural world, they’ve had to be junked to make way for the dreariness of blog, broadband, bullet point, chatroom and voicemail . If you can come up with anything else that so encapsulates how stuffy...