Where have all the flowers gone?
The power, ingenuity, and beauty of nature have fascinated mankind since times immemorial. In his poem, “Ode on Intimations of Immortality" the English romantic poet William Wordsworth writes: There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light... Are we, for the first time in history, losing our ability to pay attention to, to be amazed and humbled by, what we see around us? Oxford Junior Dictionary’s replacement of words that describe nature with the so-called 21st-century terms has rocked my world. Words like ‘acorn’ and ‘buttercup’ have disappeared, being replaced by ‘broadband’ and ‘cut and paste’. “A” is no longer for acorn, “B” for buttercup and “C” for conker. Instead, we now have "attachment", "blog" and "chatroom". A list of words taken out of the OJD includes hamster, heron, kingfisher, lark, leopard, magpie, mussel...