TimesOnline (UK) is trying to save them:
It may appear agrestic to ask, but The Times is calling on its readers to come to the rescue of words that risk fading into caliginosity.
Dictionary compilers at Collins have decided that the word list for the forthcoming edition of its largest volume is embrangled with words so obscure that they are linguistic recrement. Such words, they say, must be exuviated abstergently to make room for modern additions that will act as a roborant for the book.
[Story tip and panel: Dinosaur Comics]
Not wishing to perorate, and knowing it may be the acme of podsnappery to elocute: but I propound that more antedeluvian or obscure words be ensiled until such a epoch that they become luculent.
Vitiate at will.
…
And I’m spent…
Didn’t Blackadder pull that gag on Dr. Johnson?