I know I’ve read articles before about such-and-such a dictionary adding new words or common slang to their newest edition, but, of course, I can’t find any of them at the moment. So what are the details? Is there a time requirement of word being used in the vernacular before it gets added to, say, Webster’s? Or are they chosen in a variety of ways?
Help me out here. I know someone knows this.
The website for the Oxford English Dictionary devotes several pages to just this very question.
http://www.oed.com/about/writing/
One can assume the process is similar for other dictionaries.
Dictionaries are just history books. They record how words are used. Some people have argued that I have been redefining the meaning of the word “psychedelic”. My websites (which get about a thousand unique users a day) may be determinig the definition of this word. How I use this word may years later be used determine what future dictionaries say. Dictionaries don’t define words. Common usage does.
I never said they did. But at some point, the dictionary editors say “hmmm, I keep hearing the word “bling-bling.” Maybe we oughta add it!” That’s what I’m getting at - how does, say, “bling-bling” get in, but “shizzle my nizzle” remains out? (just examples, I have no clue if either are in any dictionaries at all.)
Nice page, daffyduck - I’ll take a look. Any more like it?
Dictionary editors collect citations, both through extensive reading and a corps of volunteers. The citations show the original text, the context, the place it was published and the date. As citations pile up over the years, editors make editorial decisions. Some words appear to become permanent parts of the language. Others are short-lived fads. The editors examine the new words - which include both new coinages and new meanings to older words - and write up definitions, pronunciations, spellings and variants, examples and all the other paraphernalia of a good dictionary. It’s all totally up to editorial discretion.
The added words can be included in a new edition of the dictionary, as a separate new word supplement, or as part of an ongoing updating online.
Usage, pure and simple. If “snork” becomes the common term for stifling a laugh, then the dictionaries, being purely descriptive, will add it as a colloquial usage.
Most dictionary publishers have a staff who document such usages, making notes of terms used in articles that may become new words. (I presume there are criteria for how often or how widely it needs to show up to be deemed a “real word,” as opposed to, say, someone coining “braxalat” as a nonce word to illustrate some point in an essay, and that being the only usage of it anywhere.) They rely in large part on contributions from readers alert to new coinages who send them in.
One could contact Merriam-Webster, the folks that put out Thorndike-Barnhart, etc., to find out how to become a regular reporter of words to their staff.
In recent years computers have become a very powerful tool which dictionary editors can use. In addition to manual submissions they use huge collections - corpora - of language samples, both written and spoken. The content can be derived from many different sources. Newspapers and magazines are very common because the data is relatively easy to get, but there are corpora that cover many types of texts.
If you have a sufficient corpus, you can for example search for “all new words that appeared regularly over the last year in so-and-so many different sources.” Of course you still have to decide on the exact criteria and this gives only very rough guidelines, but if your sample is large enough, you know which words are worth a closer look.