Timeline for Can one ever say for certain a word does not exist?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
37 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Aug 17, 2023 at 0:37 | history | reopened |
Xanne Heartspring jimm101 |
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| Aug 16, 2023 at 23:36 | review | Reopen votes | |||
| Aug 17, 2023 at 0:37 | |||||
| Jan 14, 2015 at 10:13 | review | Reopen votes | |||
| Jan 14, 2015 at 18:34 | |||||
| Jan 14, 2015 at 9:41 | vote | accept | Celeritas | ||
| Dec 24, 2014 at 15:30 | review | Reopen votes | |||
| Dec 25, 2014 at 21:12 | |||||
| Dec 23, 2014 at 16:46 | history | closed |
FumbleFingers Lynn Drew user63230 Matt Gutting |
Opinion-based | |
| Dec 23, 2014 at 15:32 | comment | added | Wayfaring Stranger | @JanusBahsJacquet Words are social constructs, not noumenal monads that lie off in some space, waiting to be discovered. | |
| Dec 23, 2014 at 13:26 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | @WayfaringStranger That’s just shifting the blame—what makes something a proper word, then, and how do you determine whether something is proper or not? The question ends up being the exact same as whether something is a ‘word’ or not. | |
| Dec 22, 2014 at 20:13 | history | edited | tchrist♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
fixed grammar
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| Dec 21, 2014 at 20:40 | comment | added | fluffy | "Embiggen is a perfectly cromulent word." | |
| Dec 21, 2014 at 14:07 | comment | added | Wayfaring Stranger | The act of saying or writing conjures a word into existence. Beyond that point it's all a matter of debating whether or not it's a proper word. | |
| Dec 21, 2014 at 13:32 | comment | added | Martin Smith | I don't understand why "administrate" would be a self contained logical fallacy. Can you elaborate? | |
| Dec 21, 2014 at 8:08 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | 'This word does not exist' is self-contradictory. 'This string is not demonstrably in the lexicon and should not therefore be termed a 'word' ' might be a better starting point. | |
| Dec 21, 2014 at 7:18 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | That's forcing a particular sense onto the meaning of 'word'. "Private 'words' " are not part of the lexicon, and I want a term meaning 'a member of the subset of strings tchrist is determined to count as words actually accepted as part of the English lexicon by any of OED, Collins, AHDEL, ...'. | |
| Dec 21, 2014 at 7:01 | comment | added | tchrist♦ | @EdwinAshworth Have you truly never known people with "private" words? "Oh," they'll say, "that's just Ed's word for constipated, you know." | |
| Dec 21, 2014 at 4:46 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | @Janus I'm not saying we can dictate usage in general, just have a site-standardised definition for 'word' (or 'wurg' if we need a separate term). A simplistic one would be 'a string appearing in the latest revision of OED'. Then we can nail 'Is xzy a word?' / 'Can you suggest a new word I could use instead of 'myristicivorous?' questions. I am myself guilty of using things other than wurgs, but would never claim them to be words. | |
| Dec 20, 2014 at 23:14 | comment | added | tchrist♦ | @JanusBahsJacquet More’s the pity: I rather enjoyed the notion of academic thugs. :) | |
| Dec 20, 2014 at 23:13 | history | edited | tchrist♦ |
edited tags
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| Dec 20, 2014 at 22:56 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | (And by ‘thugs’, my phone-typing butterfingers mean things.) | |
| Dec 20, 2014 at 21:52 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | @Edwin It's kind of like ‘language’ and ‘dialect’. Decades of academics studying these thugs in detail have been unable to come up with a definition of word they can agree on, so I think perhaps you're being a bit ambitious in thinking we can do so here. ;-) | |
| Dec 20, 2014 at 21:30 | answer | added | John Dahle | timeline score: 1 | |
| Dec 20, 2014 at 21:11 | answer | added | tchrist♦ | timeline score: 13 | |
| Dec 20, 2014 at 21:11 | history | edited | Em1 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
deleted 2 characters in body
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| Dec 20, 2014 at 20:59 | answer | added | anongoodnurse | timeline score: 4 | |
| Dec 20, 2014 at 19:50 | answer | added | ScotM | timeline score: 2 | |
| Dec 20, 2014 at 17:52 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | One would have thought that we ought to agree a standard definition of 'word' on ELU before even attempting to discuss whether rrr-s-s-gfxyz say is a word. | |
| Dec 20, 2014 at 13:27 | comment | added | Rusty Tuba | Well, it appears to carry meaning... | |
| Dec 20, 2014 at 13:24 | comment | added | Kris | "Is 'xyz' a word?" is one of the most common questions. And rightly so. One needs to check the context-related meaning of the word 'word' to answer the question of whether 'xyz' is a "word." The fact seems to be that it can be definitively stated if a certain 'xyz' is a word, but not if it is not a word. | |
| Dec 20, 2014 at 13:23 | answer | added | TimR | timeline score: 0 | |
| Dec 20, 2014 at 12:44 | review | Close votes | |||
| Dec 23, 2014 at 16:46 | |||||
| Dec 20, 2014 at 12:09 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | The number of words in the English language is: 1,025,109.8 – this is the estimate by the Global Language Monitor on January 1, 2014.... Currently there is a new word created every 98 minutes or about 14.7 words per day.//The OED is the definitive record of the English language, featuring 600000 words. | |
| Dec 20, 2014 at 12:01 | comment | added | WS2 | If it is not in the OED, nor any of a number of Urban Dictionaries, I give up on it being a word. | |
| Dec 20, 2014 at 11:46 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | Then there are those who claim that when certain well-known methods of producing words (eg adding certain suffixes) are labelled 'productive' it means you're guaranteed to end up with a word if you follow the rules. But 'productive' means 'not having extremely narrow application'. | |
| Dec 20, 2014 at 11:43 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | There is no governing body in English set up to determine the lexicon at any moment in time. Definitions of 'word' are contradictory and imprecise: most people would say that the appearance of say rrr-s-s-gfxyz in print or in a maths textbook does not make the string a word. Most would say that there has to be a certain degree of 'acceptedness' and of common understanding of what a word's denotation is. Everybody says that new words appear. But some claim that - - - - - say has made it to word status, while others say it's not in general enough use to make that claim... | |
| Dec 20, 2014 at 11:27 | history | edited | Celeritas | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
fixed typo
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| Dec 20, 2014 at 11:25 | comment | added | Andrew Leach♦ | xyz is apparently pronounced /ɪksiːz/. | |
| Dec 20, 2014 at 11:21 | history | asked | Celeritas | CC BY-SA 3.0 |