The Endling Dictionary
An archive of tens of thousands of fading words; the visible counter falls as words erode.
an archive of words with one speaker left
An endling is the last individual of a species. When it dies, the species is a memory. Words go the same way. Here, they go visibly.
Every two weeks, somewhere, a language goes quiet for good. Its words do not die of age. They die of silence.
press and hold a word to speak it. let go and the dying resumes.
noun · English, recorded 1623, long fallen from use
the warmth of the sun felt in winter
last heard: printed once, in Henry Cockeram’s English Dictionarie, and hardly since
spoken today, in your voice. it counts.
noun · Devon and Somerset dialect
the half-light just after the sun has gone
last heard: a kitchen in Ashburton, 2019, said to a dog
spoken today, in your voice. it counts.
verb · Flemish, rural, fading
to smile quietly to yourself about something you will not tell
last heard: a churchyard bench in Zottegem, 2016
spoken today, in your voice. it counts.
No word dies of old age. A word dies when the places it lived in close their doors: the classroom that corrects it, the company that smiles at it, the city that never asks about the field it named. The last speaker does not forget the word. They just run out of people to say it to.
Past saving. We keep them the way a museum keeps bones: not to bring them back, but so no one can say they never lived.
uhtceare
lying awake before dawn, worrying
Old English · died with its language
forswunk
exhausted from overwork
Middle English · no speaker found after the fifteenth century
moonglade
the track of moonlight on water
English, poetic · survives only in old almanacs
Use it once this week, aloud, where someone can hear it. That is the entire program. There is no newsletter.