The Save the Words site, dedicated to keeping underused words alive, launched back in 2009.

“Each year,” the site tells us, in tones more usually employed on advertisements exhorting us not to buy puppies for Christmas, “hundreds of words are dropped from the English language. Old words, wise words, hard-working words. Words that once led meaningful lives, but now lie unused, unloved and unwanted.” At this point, having whipped its readers into a state of tearful guilt, it announces that “you can change all that!”. An adoption scheme is proposed: you choose a word, and then sign a pledge, stating “I hereby promise to use this word, in conversation and correspondence, as frequently as possible to the very best of my abilities.”

There are hundreds of wonderful words on the site crying out for loving homes. Gazing out with soulful eyes are obstrigillate (“to oppose: to resist”) jussulent (“full of broth or soup”), resarciate (“to make amends”) and my favourite so far: “drollic”, pertaining to puppet shows – as in the sentence “when it comes to keeping hyperactive children busy, nothing works better than a good drollic”. To resarciate for my obstrigillation to the use of urette, therefore, I hereby promise to shoehorn these others into conversation whenever and wherever possible.

See: Guardian.co.uk