Is “dispreferred” a mainstream word in English?

Question

I just recently came across the word dispreferred in a linguistic document. I have never heard the word used before, rather I generally hear something like "preferred something else" in everyday conversation. Is dispreferred a linguistics/language specific term or does it have more widespread usage in non-technical conversations? As I type the word dispreferred, I see a red underline indicating that I have entered a misspelled word.

Answer 1

It's not in my Merriam-Webster or dictionary.reference.com, and I've never heard of it.

LanguageLog has some citations for it, but the article seems to confirm, if anything, that it's linguists' jargon.

Answer 2

'Mainstream', No. 'Word', Yes.

It's more of a domain-specific term defined in linguistics, although it does seem to appear in general English writing in a few instances. [Of course some people will love (or hate) the heightened suspense or the "gambling thrill," more of which is possible in the multistage lottery, and will prefer (or dis- prefer) it to a simple lottery.]^a

It also seems to appear in linguistics literature in its general English sense apart from reference by its DSL-definition. [If "preferred'V'dispreferred" refer not to tastes/desires of the participants but to the sequential practices and ... And how do these different practices for preferred and dispreferred responses help us understand an important aggregate] ^[b]

See definition and some discussion on disprefer on Wiktionary: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/disprefer
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Talk:disprefer