One of my favorite hobby horses: The OED

The 2007 edition of the OED has done away with over 16,000 hyphens that once split compound nouns used to refer to a single entity (such as hobby-horse). Thank goodness. We philosophers were way ahead of the curve on this one, insofar as we have been using words hitherto considered multiple for some time. Henceforth, whereof one cannot hypenate, thereof one must concatenate forthwith. (before you linguists start writing me, yes, I know that my examples are not compound nouns)

See the Reuter’s report here:

Thousands of hyphens perish as English marches on

And the OED press release on the new edition is:

OED News

The new word list includes (my favorites): arsewipe (n), boink (n, v and int), Cal-Mex (adj), guggle (n), over-emote (v), lawyer (as a v), touristed (adj) and wankered (adj).

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