In Landmarks, scholar of language and landscapes Robert Macfarlane noted that the most recent edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary added a number of new entries, most drawn from the digital realm: blog, broadband, chatroom, and MP3 player. To make room for their debut, other words were sacrificed. Among the excised, Macfarlane found (or noted the absence of): acorn, adder, and ash. Hazel, heather, and heron were gone too, as were otter, pasture, and willow. Editors told him essentially, “Yes, words of the natural realm were no longer in wide use by an urbanized generation; less germane to modern childhoods, they had been left out.”

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