How do words get to the dictionary
Ever wondered how a word gets to a dictionary?
To decide which words to include in the dictionary and to determine what they mean, dictionary editors study the language to find out which words people use most often and how they use them. Each day most dictionary editors devote an hour or two to reading books, newspapers, magazines, electronic publications — in fact a cross-section of all kinds of published materials. The editors are looking for new words, new meanings of existing words, evidence of variant spellings or 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.
The 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 itself
2. an example of the word used in context
3. bibliographic information about the source from which the word and example were taken.
Before a new word can be added to the dictionary, it must have enough citations to show that it is widely used. But sometimes a large number of citations might even make a word more difficult to define, because many citations show too little about the meaning of a word to be helpful. A word 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 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.
That is how the word bootylicious made it to the dictionary.
It was not until destiny’s child released the song called “bootylicious” that the word got massive usage among people. It had numerous citations from different sources as it was used before but wasn’t as popular. Therefore for any word to enter the dictionary, it has to be popular among a large population.
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