Quote:
Originally posted by degrawj
i would say it's not a word if it's not in the Oxford English Dictionary. that is THE dictionary of the english language. it has over 500,000 words, with over 2.5 million quotations, and comes in a 20 volume package. so that's how i would personally define whether a word is truly a word or not.
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I would agree, but suggest that you supplement that with the regional and technical dictionaries of your choice. As someone pointed out above, many technical phrases do not appear in the dictionary, and it is often helpful to include your regional dialect.
(eg. American-English, Hiberno-English)