This week I have a meeting middle about new words in the Oxford English Dictionary and

a type of joke called a Tom Swifty and a tidbit about the surprising origin of the word

Fony.

The headline for this article on the Quick and Dirty Tips website is something of a joke.

New words added to the Oxford English Dictionary.

And it's a joke because I'm implying that it's unusual for the dictionary to add new

words.

But the editors actually do it every quarter.

But I still love reading the new words and thinking about them and one of my all-time

favorite grammar girl episodes is about how words get in the dictionary.

So we'll talk about them a bit today.

Dictionaries add new words so often because people keep using new words.

That's the short version of how words get in the dictionary.

If enough people use them, they get added.

If you hear a word you don't know or don't understand and you go to the dictionary to

look it up, you want it to be there.

So it makes sense for dictionaries to include words as they're used.

An interesting cultural difference that I learned about from Lynn Murphy, who has a great

book coming out on the differences between American and British English called the

Prodigal Tongue, is that Americans are much more likely than the British to view dictionaries

as THE authority on words, the language Bible, so to speak, whereas British readers

are more likely to view the dictionary as a book for word lovers.

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