Suggestion/request for reclassifying uncommon words as common words

[TRex]

The following words seem common enough (to me) and, imo, should be reclassified as common words.
brae
berk
berm
kerb

[rogue_mother]

Berk and kerb used to be classified as common, but Alan was persuaded to reclassify these as less than common. See https://theforum.lexigame.com/index.php/topic,743.0.html for berk and https://theforum.lexigame.com/index.php/topic,744.0.html for kerb. Possibly one could argue that kerb should be reinstated, since it is the British spelling for curb, and so would be analogous to words like colour, labour, metre, ionise, and such like, which are classified as common, even though they are not spelled that way in a very large part of the English speaking world. I myself would have no problem with either berm or brae being reclassified as common, but some people might not agree as concerns berm. A while back, someone proposed to add bermed to the list of accepted words, at which time some very knowledgeable forum mates professed not knowing this word. See the discussion here: https://theforum.lexigame.com/index.php/topic,1277.0.html.

[Alan W]

Thanks for those links, RM - they'll help me avoid contradicting myself!

It does seem clear that berk is not well-known in the US, while berm is little-known in the UK. So I think they should remain as rare words.

Kerb is an interesting case, because of the point you mention, RM, that it is a British spelling. In the previous thread on the word, I didn't really discuss the issue, but a while later I included the word in a group being re-classified to rare. Most of the words with variant US/UK spellings follow a pattern: or/our, ize/ise, er/re, etc. So a player has a chance of inferring the existence of a word, even if they can't remember ever seeing it. This doesn't apply to kerb, so I think I'll leave it as rare too.

The word brae seems to me to be relatively little-used these days, outside of crossword puzzles. In the US and Australia, it seems to be mainly used in place names like Bonnie Brae, so people may be familiar with the string of letters, without knowing what it means - or whether it means anything at all. I'm not convinced I should change this one either.