Words: dumpbin, n.

SOME NEWSPAPERS seemed to scour the recent new edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary but in fact recycled the press release. Here in the Words unit, this digest of last year's vulgar New Oxford Dictionary has been rigorously tested.

Dictionary makers now work in a verbal wind- tunnel, and many of our Words escape them - permie, tosher - while ripping is deemed dated, not hip. Then again, it does have 24/7, but is useless for others slated for investigation, such as dumpbin, a bizarre word for something to sell a book. Nobody includes shelfwobbler - those (literally) eye-catching cards which protrude from rows of books in stores. When did redtop come to mean popular newspaper as well as a choleric fellow? Roll on, OED 3.