A NEWDICTION

2013 by Louise Kellywww.louise-kelly.com

Printed by: Ripe Digital,Unit 1, Park Lane Ind Est,Corsham, WiltshireSN13 9LG

The Modern English, sometimes is described as the first global working language, is the dominant language or in some instances even the required international language of communications, science, information technology, business, seafaring, aviation, entertainment, radio and diplomacy.

Its spread beyond the British Isles began with the growth of the British Empire, and by the late 19th century its reach was truly global. Following British colonisation from the 16th to 19th centuries, it became the dominant language in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The growing economic and cultural influence of the US and its status as a global superpower since World War II have significantly accelerated the language’s spread across the planet.

A working knowledge of English has become a requirement in a number of fields, occupations and professions such as medicine and computing; as a consequence over a billion people speak English to at least a basic level. It is one of six official languages of the United Nations.

This global language it consists of millions of different words that are used on a daily basis, all of which are collated in various different dictionaries. Descriptive and slang words are coined by people all over the world every day, but it doesn’t mean they are in the dictionary. This publication looks at how words are chosen to officially be a part of the dictionary, by statements given by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, both of which are highly regarded and have been in production for over 150 years.

W O R D

A unit of language, consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their written representation, that functions

as a principal carrier of meaning.

How does a word get into the dictionary?A word gets into the dictionary by being used, that’s the only way. Lexicographers – the people who make dictionaries, don’t make words; they find and record them. They are like the entomologist who goes into the rain forest looking for new species of beetles. Similarly, you can’t invent a word and petition to have it admitted into the dictionary. You can however invent a word and use it, of course, and if your word catches on it might end up in the dictionary someday. Though, this is extremely unlikely.

“If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?”– Stephen Wright

Merriam-Webster

“America’s leading and most-trusted provider of language information.”

The Search For New Words

Tracking Word UsageTo decide which words to include in the dictionary and to determine what they mean, Merriam-Webster editors study the language as it’s used. They carefully monitor which words people use most often and how they use them.

Each day most Merriam-Webster editors devote an hour or two to reading a cross section of published material, including books, newspapers, magazines, and electronic publications; in our office this activity is called “reading and marking.” The editors scour the texts in search of new words, new usages of existing words, variant spellings, and inflected forms (in short), anything that might help in deciding if a word belongs in the dictionary, understanding what it means, and determining typical usage. Any word of interest is marked, along with surrounding context that offers insight into its form and use.

CitationsThe marked passages are then input into a computer system and stored both in machine-readable form and on 3” x 5” slips of paper to create citations. Each citation has the following elements:

1. the word itself2. an example of the word used in context3. bibliographic information about the source

From which the word and example were taken Merriam-Webster’s citation files, which were begun in the 1880s, now contain 15.7 million examples of words used in context and cover all aspects of the English vocabulary. Citations are also available to editors in a searchable text database (linguists call it a corpus) that includes more than 70 million words drawn from a great variety of sources

L I N G U I S T I C S

The science of language, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics,

pragmatics, and historical linguistics.

From Citation to Entry

How does a word make the jump from the citation file to the dictionary?

The process begins with dictionary editors reviewing groups of citations. Definers start by looking at citations covering a relatively small segment of the alphabet – for example gri- to gro-, along with the entries from the dictionary being reedited that are included within that alphabetical section. It is the definer’s job to determine which existing entries can remain essentially unchanged, which entries need to be revised, which entries can be dropped, and which new entries should be added. In each case, the definer decides on the best course of action by reading through the citations and using the evidence in them to adjust entries or create new ones.

Before a new word can be added to the dictionary, it must have enough citations to show that it is widely used. But having a lot of citations is not enough; in fact, a large number of citations might even make words more difficult to define, because many citations show too little about the meaning of a word to be helpful. Sometimes words may be rejected for entry into a general dictionary if all of its citations come from a single source or if they are all from highly specialized publications that reflect the jargon of experts within a single field.

To be included in a Merriam-Webster dictionary, a word must be used in a substantial number of citations that come from a wide range of publications over a considerable period of time. Specifically, the word must have enough citations to allow accurate judgments about its establishment, currency, and meaning.

The number and range of citations needed to add words to the dictionary varies. In rare cases, a word jumps onto the scene and is both instantly prevalent and likely to last, as was the case in the 1980s with AIDS. In such a situation, the editors determine that the word has become firmly established in a relatively short time and should be entered in the dictionary, even though its citations may not span the wide range of years exhibited by other words.

Size Does Matter

The size and type of dictionary also affects how many citations a word needs to gain admission. Because an abridged dictionary, such as Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate® Dictionary, has fairly limited space, only the most commonly used words can be entered; to get into that type of dictionary, any word must be supported by a significant number of citations. But a large unabridged dictionary, such as Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, has room for many more words, so terms with fewer citations can still be included.

Authority Without AuthoritarianismChange and variation are as natural in language as they are in other areas of human life and Merriam-Webster reference works must reflect that fact. By relying on citational evidence, we hope to keep our publications grounded in the details of current usage so they can calmly and dispassionately offer information about modern English. That way, our references can speak with authority without being authoritarian.

Size Does Matter

“If you have a big enough dictionary, just about everything is a word.”– Dave Barry

Oxford EnglishDictionary

“Widely regarded as the accepted authority on the English language.”

Oxford University Press has one of the largest and most wide-ranging language research programmes in the world. Our most important resources are the Oxford English Corpus and the Oxford Reading Programme. The Corpus consists of entire documents sourced largely from the World Wide Web, while the Reading Programme is an electronic collection of sentences or short extracts drawn from a huge variety of writing, from song lyrics and popular fi ction to scientifi c journals. It’s based on the contributions of an international network of readers who are on the lookout for instances of new words and meanings or other language changes.

We continually monitor the Corpus and the Reading Programme to track new words coming into the language: when we have evidence of a new term being used in a variety of different sources (not just by one writer) it becomes a candidate for inclusion in one of our dictionaries. For every new dictionary or online update we assess all the most recent terms that have emerged and select those which we judge to be the most signifi cant or important and those which we think are likely to stand the test of time.

Finding New Words

What is a corpus?A corpus is a collection of texts of written (or spoken) language presented in electronic form. It provides the evidence of how language is used in real situations, from which lexicographers can write accurate and meaningful dictionary entries. The Oxford English Corpus is at the heart of dictionary making in Oxford in the 21st century and ensures that we can track and record the very latest developments in language today. By analysing the corpus and using special software, we can see words in context and fi nd out how new words and senses are emerging, as well as spotting other trends in usage, spelling, world English, and so on. Using the corpus enables lexicographers to examine a word in detail by looking at all the different contexts in which it occurs.

EvidenceIn previous centuries dictionaries tended to contain lists of words that their writers thought might be useful, even if there was no evidence that anyone had ever actually used these words. This is not the case today. New terms have to be recorded in a print or online source before they can be considered: it’s not enough just to hear them in conversation or on television, although we do analyse material from Internet message boards and TV scripts.

It used to be the case that a new term had to be used over a period of two or three years before we could consider adding it to a print dictionary. In today’s digital age, the situation has changed. New terms can achieve enormous currency with a wide audience in a much shorter space of time, and people expect to find these new ‘high-profile’ words in their dictionaries. This presents an additional challenge to lexicographers trying to assess whether a term is ephemeral or whether it will become a permanent feature of the language.

Personal inventionsPeople often send us words they have made up and ask if we will add their invented terms to one of our dictionaries. Unfortunately, the answer is usually no, because we only add words that we consider to have genuinely entered the language: we assess this by looking at all the evidence we have in our databases. Of course, some invented words do catch on and become an established part of English, either because they fill a gap or because they are describing something new. Examples of this type of invented word include wiki, quark, spoof, and hobbit.

L E X I C O G R A P H Y

The process or profession of writing or compiling dictionaries

“The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.”– Jean Cocteau