Obscure Collins words

This page discusses how many of the words in the Collins lexicon seem obscure to OWL2 players, and is part of our introduction to Collins (SOWPODS) in North America.

Are All Collins Words Obscure, Obsolete, Foreign, etc.?

The short answer is mostly not, at least no more obscure than already makes up the majority of the OWL2.

One must be careful to avoid a biased viewpoint, because, of course, when viewing the words that are CSW-only, one is not viewing the CSW itself, but just that part of it that contains the words not in the OWL2. These are bound to be somewhat obscure, because if they were common everyday words widely used in English they would be in the OWL2 already.

Breaking down the list of CSW-only words into categories by meaning shows that a significant majority of the new words to be added are further examples of the kinds of words that already make up the OWL2, such as animals, currency, minerals, and so on. Because the Scrabble lexica (both OWL2 and CSW) are based on single-volume abridged dictionaries, and not the full unabridged versions, such as Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, or the Oxford English Dictionary, they in fact really contain only a small fraction of the totality of English words. It is thus not surprising they that do not entirely overlap.

There are some differences: CSW has more obsolete and archaic words. They are not unique to CSW (OWL2 has perhaps 1,000 already), but there are certainly more. There are also more dialect words, particularly Scots, a result of the previous word source, The Chambers Dictionary, being based in Scotland, and its words being incorporated into the Collins Corpus. There are also significant numbers of words from countries where English is common, such as Australia, South Africa, and India. Ultimately, the ideal content of a word list is somewhat subjective.

Note: Words do not appear in more than one category, so those not under ‘obsolete’, ‘archaic’, etc. are not obsolete or archaic. The list was compiled manually, and so is not guaranteed complete.

Number of Words
Abbreviations	86
Animals	523
Archaic	164
Australia	112
Chemicals/minerals	141
Clothing/fashion	95
Computing	32
Currency	36
Dialect	177
‘er’ nouns	11
Food/Drink	200
France	112
Geography/geology	87
Germany	15
Heraldry	44
India	132
Interjections	43
Irregular inflections	345
Ireland	36
Italy	28
Japan	21
Language	51
Latin	13
Law	52
Mathematical	22
Medical/anatomical	153
Milton	26
Music	120
New Zealand	122
Obsolete	388
Other	50
Other adjective	383
Other -ier -iest adjective	154
Other noun	1269
Other verb	573
Plants	321
Religious/spiritual	160
South Africa	66
Scots	573
Shakespeare	207
Slang	48
Spenser	307
Sports/games	77
Units	41
USA	12
Welsh	7
Total	635

Besides this list, another excellent source of CSW browsing is to view Albert Hahn’s postings of David Sutton’s wordlists on the crossword-games-pro (CGP) email list. Membership is only open to tournament players, but if you are a member, go to the advanced search page, and type in ‘David Sutton’s Word List’ into the ‘Subject: contains’ box, and click search. The CGP messages are versions of David’s lists at the British Association (ABSP’s) site, but have been marked up to show which words are CSW only. (Note that the ‘New Collins Words’ there are not referring to words not in OWL2, but to the last update to the International list. Only the CGP posts show which ones are CSW-only from the OWL2 point of view.)

Please direct comments about this page to its author, Nick Ball.