The Lexicographer's Rules

Maybe this is the answer to all the emails I get from people claiming to have created a previously unknown word. Most of the time they’re wrong—they didn’t invent a unique word, but merely re-coined it (see this post on what “to coin” can now mean: not to invent a word, but merely to say it in a noteworthy fashion), or heard it before and it stuck in their subconscious, or even—and this is true—they know perfectly well they didn’t invent the word in question but they’re making a power grab anyway.

Much of the time, even if it does appear that the word is absolutely original (as far as can be determined in the searchable written record), the word is a sure loser. Doomed to fail, as most words are. They’re like mayflies, I always say—a single day on this earth looking for love, then oblivion. Like most of the words in Merriam-Webster’s Open Dictionary. Losers.

Yet there’s a need for recognition. That’s all most neologizing correspondents want. “Remember me. I was the one.“

Googlemark uses the Google programming interface to live search the Google index for the a string typed in the Googlemark search field. If it finds it, it says so. If it doesn’t, you get to register your word as a Googlemark. It’s like a trademark only for words that don’t exist in Google. That makes it your word. You now have some kind of proof. Of course, if you created a brand new word and Google indexed it before you can Googlemark it, then you’re screwed.

I found the site, incidentally, because someone tried to Googlemark chillax and clicked over to my web site when the word proved not to be Googlemarkable.

In any case, I Googlemarked the word butternuttership which I define as an unpaid internship in which the intern subsists on candy out of vending machines. It’s based loosely on the Nabisco Nutter Butter cookies with a slight rearrangement of the name. Not many vending machines have them, but snickership and trailmixship seemed like 12-hour losers instead of the full 24-hour loserdom of butternuttership.

And here’s my Googlemark for butternuttership (apparently the 107th Googlemarked word):

butternuttership

(Source Link)

Already in OED, so no point in recording it as a cite, but worth pointing out: chitting ‘sprouting, germination; spec. the process of allowing potatoes, etc., to sprout.‘ In the gerund/noun form, it dates to 1727. The verb to chit ‘of seed: to sprout, germinate’ dates to 1601. (Source Link)

If all dictionary publishers were sued for errors of lexicography, then there’d be no dictionaries left. Of course, this fellow in China is suing the bookstore where he bought his copy of the Xinhua Dictionary and not the publisher. “It is too troublesome for me to file a lawsuit in Beijing where the press is located. So I bought a Xinhua Dictionary in the book city and chose it as the defendant, hoping the press will get involved in this way.“

Shanghai Book City (Shanghai Shucheng) is the name of very large retail book store and not an actual city devoted to books. This is its web site, I believe.

(Source Link)

This is the kind of stuff I get to listen to in the making of a slang dictionary: Copulatin’ Blues. The linked site is not quite right as it seems to intermingle songs from volumes one and two of the collection. The “Frankie and Johnny” clip there (from the second volume released in 1984) includes an early use of the word peter meaning “penis.“ More than a couple sources claim it’s a Gene Autry recording (this one has the most detail), but it’s difficult to verify.

Glad to see that this review of Henry Hitching’s Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary on Bookslut was changed to this.

Before it was changed, the first line contained the phrase “Samuel Johnson, creator of the Oxford English Dictionary.“

Johnson was no such thing. Although the OED has used citations that appeared in Johnson’s dictionary, in no way are they the same work, nor is the OED a later version or edition of Johnson’s work. Johnson had no editorial role in the OED. He was dead.

Johnson died in 1784 and the proposal for the creation of what became the OED didn’t appear until 1857.

The original review repeatedly conflated Johnsons dictionary with the Oxford English Dictionary, making me wonder if the reviewer even read Hitching’s book.