annal /annalist

[mkenuk]

An annal is 'the record of the events of one year' It is classed as 'uncommon' in Chi, most recently in the finalise 7-by-many game.

The writers of these uncommon histories are known as annalists, but it would seem that they are more common than their writings, eg in the sibilant game.

An inconsistency?

Sod's law, I played the rare one and missed the common one.

Typical!

[jancsika]

I initially thought the same. However "annal" seems to be  one of those words which is more common in the plural than in the singular, which may account for that. Indeed, "annals" was also accepted as a rare word, even though it is a plural!

[Alan W]

It seems that annals was originally excluded from Chi, as a plural, but I changed this in 2008, to allow both annal and annals as rare words. There's not much background info about this change. In 2007 I actually conducted a survey in the forum to see if the plurals policy should be changed. In the process of reporting that most of those who'd voted had opted to leave the policy as it was, I remarked:

I'll continue to refine the word list from time to time, to include words wrongly excluded under the rule. (A couple of examples I'm aware of are "besides" and "annals".) There seem to be quite a few such cases, so if you spot one, let us know.

In fact, I never got around to changing besides, which remains to this day excluded, but I did change annals. Unfortunately the annals of Chi are not comprehensive enough to throw any more light on these events.

At any rate, I have no doubt that annalist is not a common word, so I'll change it.

[Jacki]

Ok so annal, annals and annalist are all rare?

[Alan W]

Yep