After a suitcase of documents and my laptop, the possession I would save third in a fire is a battered black book.

It lives at the bottom of an old shoe box in my cupboard. Inside is a gallimaufry of words just the way I like them — long, old and tasty.

They include archaic treasures gathered over the years from Charles Dickens, CS Lewis and other authors, as well as many gleaned from websites like Vocabulary.com.

• ‘Vellichor’ and other wonderful English words
• Forty strange facts about the English language
• Could the five cent coin be on its last legs

Happily, I concede we cannot halt the march of language. I watch with interest as ’emoji’, ‘selfie’ and ‘belfie’ pervade modern English, and would never frown at the use of a smiley face.

But I wouldn’t rescue a page full of hashtags from a slight breeze.

On Thursday, the Oxford University Press declared ‘hashtag’ to be the children’s word of the year, based on thousands of short stories submitted to a BBC competition.

“Children have extended its use from a simple prefix or as a search term for Twitter to an editorial device to add drama or comment,” Oxford University Press spokesman Vineeta Gupta said in a statement.

I’m okay with that. I swear. Honestly. #notevensad

But forgive me if every now and then I dig out my little back word journal, bury my weary head inside and reminisce.

Here are some of my favourites: