Words come and go over time. But at some point, someone somewhere coins a word.
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How does that word blossom from a few people using it, to being a word on everyone’s tongue and widely-used, to the extent of earning a spot in the dictionary?
Do the editors sit around and decide on their own? Do they accept input from the general public, i.e., people make nominations for new entries?
How about the opposite, when it comes to removing words?
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The rule for most dictionaries is if a word is in widespread use.
An example would be a word like “meme”. Coined by Richard Dawkins in “The Selfish Gene”. Just being included in that book wasn’t enough but these days everyone on the internet knows what a meme is. So while it was first used in 1976, dictionaries didn’t start to include it until the 90s.
Of course this can be subjective. Does a single publication using a word a lot count? Do we include very local regional slang? And of course, it will only be words that the people who write the dictionary have heard of.
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