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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Dictionary writers research how words are being used and by who. They do this by scnning thousands of pages, websites, books, social webs, etc, to see who’s using a turn of phrase or a new word. An example is Steven Colbert and the word “Truthiness”. He coined the word in a broadcast that was seen in the US and UK, then so many people started using it it’s now in the dictionary.
The Simpons created the words “embiggen” and “cromulent” in pretty much the same way.
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