How Dictionary Editors Determine which New Words will be Included in the Dictionary?

Seriously researched dictionaries are based on a vast reading programme. Readers are constantly combing magazines, books, newspapers, and even restaurant menus and catalogues for two types of words: brand-new ones such as blog, which means a type of personal website, or existing words being used in new meanings, such as cougar, which refers to an older woman dating younger men.

According to the editor-in-chief of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, "Quotations containing the words are entered into a large database. When a certain number of repeated words are recorded in the database, editors will consider that word for addition to a dictionary. The number of repeats required depends on the size of the dictionary. The rule of thumb is 15 quotations from 15 different sources with a date range of about five years. This is how we avoid nonce words - words used only once by one person - and flash-in-the-pan vogue words such as tofurkey, a tofu-turkey substitute. But it is possible that tofurkey will make it into the next edition. These inclusion criteria help determine whether a word has made it into general parlance."