The new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is out, with 2 volumes of 2,000 pages each, costing $175. Bierma discussed some of the changes in his last column. In order to shorten it, they removed:

quote:

every word that the full OED has labeled "obsolete" as of the year 1700, unless that word appears in the King James Bible or the writings of Shakespeare, Milton or Spenser. So the Shorter says goodbye to "babion" (an insult meaning "baboon," last recorded in the year 1624) and "spatch" ("kill," last seen in 1616), among other antiques.

I can understand their choice of Shakespeare and, I suppose, the King James Bible. But Milton and Spenser? Does anyone know how those a writings were chosen?

Probably because they are the writers of the time still widely read today.

quote: they are the writers of the time still widely read today.

Spenser is widely read?

Perhaps he was included because (I think) he tended to use words that were antique even at the time.

Arnie, do you mean in the Western world?

Perhaps I phrased that badly. I meant of the writers at the time, they are the most commonly-read nowadays. That is "not very", but more than many of their time.