Which shows the difference between what we think language is (fixed, with eternally clear rights and wrongs) and what it really is (dynamic, organic, ever-changing).
This summer, Merriam-Webster, as it often does, released a list of words new to the 11th edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. Some of the 150 newbies are familiar from the Web: tweet, crowdsourcing, social media. Others, such as boomerang child and helicopter parent, are from social discourse. Still others, such as bromance and cougar, are good old slang. The fist bump has been around since at least the 1960s, but the affectionate Obamas have made it part of parlance.
They all belong, says Sokolowski. People have been using them a lot for a long time. And that gets you in.
"If a word is likely to be encountered by a general readership," says Sokolowski, "it has to be in the dictionary, has to be, because otherwise the dictionary doesn't work. Some people complain about seeing tweet in the dictionary - but tweets were central in the Arab Spring, and in the Anthony Weiner affair. People need to know what a tweet is."
"People have a misconception that dictionaries and grammar books determine what language is," says Muffy E. A. Siegel, associate professor of English at Temple University. "But in fact, it's the opposite. We're always changing and getting rid of words and rules people no longer use. Language is a living system that changes to serve the needs of its users."
How do you keep track of all that? At Merriam-Webster, long famed for its file cards, much is now done by computer, but the actual "reading and marking" is done by hand. Staffers comb publications from Vogue and Vanity Fair to Wine Spectator and Sailing.
