How exactly do words become actual words?
In: 12
*grunts aggressively
*hears grunts back, less aggressive
*moans aggressively
Huh? – becomes a word.
People say it, more people start saying it, and that’s it.
Dictionaries recognize this new word and add it.
This is also how word meanings change.
You have to submit an application to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Just kidding. Words become words once a population group of any size are able to communicate an idea using a commonly recognized sound/set of sounds. “Ug,” can mean “Hi” if a group of people all use it to express the same meaning, thus making it a “word.” So to answer the basis of your question, a word becomes a word once the sound or symbol is ascribed meaning, generally beyond just the representation of a sound (otherwise it would just be a letter or phoneme).
One thing to keep in mind is dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive, meaning they are used to reflect the words that are used in language in their most commonly agreed spelling and pronunciation, not to dictate what words are supposed to be used.
When they are used and understood by a community of speakers. When a new word is coined, it may be used by a small group who understand its meaning. If the word is useful and widely understood, it may become more commonly used by others, and eventually become an accepted and recognized part of the language.
For example, a new word may be introduced by mates who use it to refer to a specific concept or idea as an in-joke. If this group of friends is large or influential, the word may begin to be used by others outside of the group, and may become more widely known.
Over time, if the word continues to be used and understood by a large number of people, it may be included in dictionaries and other language reference materials, and become an official part of the language
Word (Written): “If the written word could be heard, this is what it would look like.”
Word (Spoken): “If that which is uttered causes your heart to flutter, then I have been heard.”
Honestly it’s difficult to *prevent* words from being created. For example, there are documented situations where a group of deaf children lived together in an institution, and they spontaneously developed a complete sign language.
There are also cases, like the Lykov family in Soviet Russia, where siblings grew up in total isolation from society. They too developed their own dialect of Russian, incomprehensible to outsiders.
Every word is an “actual word”
If I make up the word “blimpysmeerp” and start using it as a word, it is now a word. I don’t even need anyone else to agree.
Dictionaries are useful for the most common words but they don’t decide what words are, they just find which words people are already using, so by definition there’s always going to be a delay there. And lots of words won’t appear in a dictionary. An obvious example is jargon: dictionaries don’t list every single technical term from every field.
Linguists don’t make any distinction between “real words” and “not real words”. A word is just a grammatical function (which isn’t even that precisely defined, so linguists often talk about morphemes instead
Every word is something that at some point somebody made up and just started saying. They’re all real words
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