Not The Onion

https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-matters-podcast/episode-61-words-dropped-from-the-dictionary

There are also terms like hepatectomize. Do you know that one? (...) It means to excise the liver of, it used to be in the Unabridged, but it was removed a few years ago because it's just too rare. Now both hepatectomy and hepatectomized, the adjectival participle, they continue to be included in the Unabridged and in the Collegiate and in the merriam-webster.com dictionary, but hepatectomize, apparently no such luck anymore.

So, they do drop words, but only when they're not used anymore. But they argue "If it's in Shakespeare or Chaucer, people read it and will look it up". They did drop "Neighbor-stained" though, because even those shakespeare uses it once, nobody else does.

Peter Sokolowski: And if enough people start using neighbor-stained, that will go back in too.
Emily Brewster: Yeah. Let's not wish that though.