Open letter to the Oxford English Dictionary

The Swedish language has admitted a deluge of English words in recent decades. But a trickle has flowed the other way: presently, ”fika” seems to be gaining a foot hold, and the concept of ”lagom” has an entry in the English Wikipedia. Then there are the old canonical examples ”ombudsman” and ”smorgasbord”. Less known in the English speaking world is the sinister cousin of the latter, the so called ”salladsbord”, which I would like to put up for consideration in your next edition.

Some background is warranted. In the early years of the millenium, Stockholm faced an unprecedented crisis. Every grass covered surface, ranging from the smallest residential garden to the largest of our parks, had become infested with the most fearsome of pests, namely the black rabbit. Not only did these wreak havoc in traffic due to the involuntary aww-reflex inherent to human nature, but they also threatened to cause a major economic depression due to their inflationary nature.

To deal with the menace, the king of Sweden declared that they had to be exterminated, and proposed to do so through the destruction of their habitat. All edible greeneries were to be harvested and placed out of rabbit reach. As this coincided with a growing concern in regards to food waste, it was politically unacceptable to simply destroy the produce. Thus the ”salladsbord” was introduced in all restaurants, public and private alike. The Swedish populace was conditioned to believe that it was normal to eat fresh hay and dandelion leafs as part of every meal. Few now recall that it appeared in an effort to eradicate a spieces.

The proposed definition is thus:

salladsbord, n.
figurative. An assortment of items, assembled for an ulterior purpose, which is, in effect, wholly useless.