Ord som går i pension Om arbetet att rensa bort gamla ord i SAOL

Resumé

The paper tackles the problem of identification and deletion of obsolete words in the present edition of
the Swedish Academy Glossary (the Swcdish abbreviation is SAOL). The first edition was published
in 1874 and the different editors have put more effort into the introduction ofnew words than into the
deletion of old ones. The vocabulary ofthe 12th edition was compared with a modem corpus of some
90 million words and surprisingly many of the words in SAOL did not appear in the corpus. A substantial
number of these words will have lo be delcted. The paper discusses the thoughts behind and the
methods for such a deletion.