Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate. THE QUIRKY CHARM (AND SAD PASSING) OF ARCHAIC DICTIONARY ENTRIES. The Oxford English Dictionary is, in its current book form, almost 22,000 pages long. It represents more than a century of effort on the part of hundreds of learned scholars who have compiled an inventory of all the English words that have been in substantial use since 1150 A.D. It does a wonderful job of documenting the meaning, usage, pronunciation and etymology of these words and is a stunning intellectual accomplishment in almost every possible way. So it is rather odd to see that the O.E.D. defines the word care as 'some kind of stuff.' This seems at first glance to be a rather nonspecific definition to find in what is arguably the greatest dictionary ever created. But it is actually very specific -- just a bit archaic. The word stuff has had a variety of meanings through the ages, and at the time that this definition was written, in 1888, it referred to (among other things) 'a woollen fabric' or 'material for the gown worn by a junior counsel.' One thing not so well known about the O.E.D. is that a large portion of it was published between 1884 and 1933 and has hardly been updated since. Past improvements to the dictionary have primarily focused on adding new entries and senses of words, rather than revising the already existing ones that had become out of date. Now, however, the entire dictionary is being revised, online, for the first time ever. This current revision began in 2000. The editors have gone from the letter 'M' through the beginning of 'Re-' (although some words are edited out of sequence). Enormous changes are being wrought in the dictionary -- often through adding information that was not available when the dictionary was first written. For instance, marriage is defined quite differently today than it was when the entry was initially published a century ago, and the O.E.D. now specifies that it can refer to a union of persons of the same sex. Although I am certainly in favor of the O.E.D.'s improving itself in this fashion, I must confess to a touch of sadness when I come across one of the more whimsical definitions or etymologies that have disappeared as progress and lexicographic accuracy inexorably march forward. For instance, the word murinoid used to be defined as 'resembling the mouse or its allies' -- a turn of phrase that always evoked Tchaikovsky's 'Nutcracker.' Alas, ally is an old term of scientific classification and is no longer included in the entry for murinoid. For years I was certain that the O.E.D.'s definition of cretin ('One of a class of dwarfed and specially deformed idiots found in certain valleys of the Alps and elsewhere') was indicative of a lexicographer's distaste for the inhabitants of the Alps. But Peter Gilliver, an editor of the O.E.D.'s revision, who is also at work on a history of the dictionary, informed me that it was simply an earlier and specialized use of the word idiot and reflected no bias on the part of the creators of the dictionary. I asked Gilliver if there were parts of the dictionary the editors might feel a twinge of regret over while changing. He admitted to a wistful feeling in seeing the etymology for the phrase Pope Joan ('After the fabulous female pope Joan') falling by the wayside. I share his sense of loss, even as I understand that we no longer often use the word fabulous in the same sense as fabled. Gilliver also pointed to the word prothodaw, which has had its spelling changed to protodaw and lost its definition of 'a prime simpleton, a noodle of the first rank.' Eschewing the pejorative noodle and embracing brevity, the O.E.D. now defines it as 'a complete idiot,' which I find a bit brusque. The original definition was the only instance in which the improbable phrase 'noodle of the first rank' was used in this dictionary, and now it has gone, most likely never to return. Sadly, I expect that when the word boodle is revised, it will lose its definition of 'a stupid noodle.' I asked Irene Wotherspoon, an editor of the forthcoming Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary and a woman who has spent decades reading the O.E.D., for her favorite phrases that will likely be changed in the revision. She drew my attention to the occasional habit of the O.E.D.'s editors of writing definitions that lumped together startlingly disparate items, like the one for bing, which states that it may describe a heap of corn, potatoes, stones, earth or dead bodies. The O.E.D. is hardly unique in its occasional inclusion of whimsical or outdated entries. Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large for the O.E.D., points out that the Chambers Dictionary, most recently published in 2008, has managed to retain such gems as eclair ('a cake, long in shape but short in duration') and middle-aged ('between youth and old age, variously reckoned to suit the reckoner'). I will continue to mourn the disappearance of such definitions, but as a genre they are not so much disappearing as continually re-emerging. Semantic change is every bit as certain as death and taxes, and it is inevitable that a hundred years from now there will be entries from the dictionaries of today that are just as head-scratching and risible as the definition that Samuel Johnson playfully provided for monsieur in his great dictionary of 1755 -- 'a term of reproach for a Frenchman.' (Ammon Shea is the author of 'Reading the O.E.D.: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages.' He is currently writing a book about telephone books. William Safire is on vacation.) To purchase this article, please visit www.nytsyn.com/contact and contact your local New York Times Syndicate sales representative. For customer support, please call 1-800-972-3550 or 1-212-556-5117. 