…or, as I would define it, ‘to make more generic; to turn from a specific into a generic case’. I knew that this wonderful word that I have been dropping into emails and documents at work for many years doesn’t exist in the standard Microsoft dictionary. Recently, after it had been highlighted for the umpteenth time in Outlook, I finally looked it up. To my horror, I found that it doesn’t exist.
Except that it does. Some wonderful individuals have come to my rescue with a dictionary to which we can all submit words – the wonderful Pseudodictionary. I’m not sure who Phil T is, but he’s a man after my own heart.
The question is, “Does a word exist once it’s been added to the PseudoDictionary?”
B
PD Editor
I think that language should be defined by what people use, not by what’s in a dictionary. If a word starts being used and is understood by many people, then I think the word exists even if nobody has managed to put it into a dictionary yet.