By MELISSA DIPENTO
Each year, the Oxford English Dictionary places outdated, or shall we say, antiquated words on an endangered list.
Hundreds of words face potential extinction from the English language and possible removal from the new edition.
This year, students in Dan Monahan’s Mass Media class at Lenape High School took an increased interest in trying to save some of the words on the list.
Students in the class paired up and formed eight groups to create 30 to 90 second videos that would be featured in a school-wide Public Service Announcement Campaign.
Students had the opportunity to vote on the one word the school would adopt together to try and save.
Students were assigned specific words, Monahan said. Mass Media students worked with students from two Journalism classes to create press releases and press kits explaining why their assigned word deserves to be saved.
Students in the class voted and two finalists emerged: kexy, meaning brittle or withered and squiriferous, or having the character or qualities of a gentleman.
Students taped videos and interviews and had them air on the school’s morning show.
“As we were going along, it kept building,” Monahan said. “Everyone thought it was pretty cool.”
Students also set up shop in the school, provided snacks for passersby and made posters explaining what their word meant. One group, Monahan said, provided a question mark shaped cake. Other groups offered cookies and slushies to help get the word out about the word they want to keep in.
Students also utilized Facebook and Twitter to inform friends about the friendly war of words.
Monahan said students learned about the media process and how news gets disseminated to the masses.
“They learned that getting the message out is sometimes more important than the message itself,” Monahan said.
In the end, kexy beat squiriferous in the school wide vote.
Monahan said the word that lost, squiriferous, was the most relevant.
“Students weren’t looking to be serious. Kexy, it’s short and sounds good,” Monahan said. “Each group who won or lost, it wasn’t because of the worth or value of the idea, it was about how to manipulate the ideas.”
Monahan said he believed kexy won because the video and advertising campaign was the most engaging.
Students in the group took Justin Timberlake’s “Bringing Sexy Back” and made it “We’re Bringing Kexy Back.”
Monahan said the video incorporated shots of the elderly exercising.
“It really made people laugh,” Monahan said.
Monahan said that most of the faculty favored the word squiriferous.
“It was pretty eye opening, with different layers of editorializing,” Monahan said. “The word we thought was the best did not win. Kexy received 89 percent of the vote.”
Monahan said he felt the project was a success, as it engaged and educated students and staff throughout the school.
Some students from the class will continue to study and apply word usage. Monahan said students are planning a letter writing campaign to major companies to inform them about words that continue to be misspelled.
For more information on the project and to see the student’s videos, visit https://wiki.lrhsd.org/groups/mrmonahan/. For more on Save the Words, visit http://www.savethewords.org/.
