Buttercups Banished!

For those of you who are familiar with my blog posts, you’ll be aware we seldom comment on politics or religion. Both subjects are not much to laugh about, but to quote George Bernard Shaw again, “If you’re going to tell people the Truth, make them laugh. Otherwise they’ll kill you.”
And since we still have much work to do on this Ocean-Earth planet, zooming through space, we thought it wise to stay away from those touchy topics.
However, on the political front, we cannot help but feel there may be a fresh breeze on its way. End of a big ‘error’, start of a new era?
Something caught my attention in our local newspaper, although mostly I read the comics. The headline was “DICTIONARY BANISHES BUTTERCUPS AND SAINTS – Academics protest limits on language”. Well, yours truly is far from what is termed an academic, but I agree with their protests.

It’s about the Oxford Junior Dictionary in England. They’ve dropped from their latest edition words such as “aisle”, “bishop”, “chapel”, “empire”, “monarch” and replaced them with words such as “blog”, “broadband”, and “celebrity”.
Dozens of words related to the countryside have also been culled, such as “sycamore”, and that’s where I get my fins (and mane) up, since “buttercup” was one of the words taken out.

This doesn’t do service to children, who need countryside more than ever. I’m sure they’re comfortable with “iPod”, “MP3 player”, “blog”, etc but no need to throw the baby out with the bath water.

But just (well, not just . . . 35 years ago), when I wrote a children’s story titled, “How The Buttercups Came Back”, the Oxford Junior Dictionary has the nerve to banish them! You can find this and other stories on my websit.