Hi Phantom,

User Tsuwm (Mike Fischer) is quite correct about “getting a word into the dictionary”. I thought I’d post a true-life example of how one person managed it, just to give you an idea of what you’re up against. The following account is from an e-mail sent to me by a determined journalist correspondent. Thanks to this man’s efforts the word “hizzoner” was listed for the first time in _Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary_. The listing from mw.com is given here: hiz·zon·er \hi-ZON-n&r\ noun, often capitalized [alteration of “his honor”] (c. 1924) : used as a title for a man holding the office of mayor

Here is the account of how one person got that word into the dictionary:

“Hizzoner - that was a LOT of work over a LONG period of time. You do that once in a lifetime unless you happen to have a lot of time on your hands and are willing to dig long and hard.

“I had a need to know when it came into the language, but there was no listing anywhere in the Merriam-Webster series, so I wrote to them. They said ‘That’s odd ... we thought it had been included.’ Told me that if I furnished enough citations, they would consider it [for inclusion]. My research took about five years and included something like (in their estimation) 100 citations.

“Cites came from newspapers (from all over the country, to show that it was not only a NYC term), books (either in the title or part of the text), films (you’d be surprised how many small and long-forgotten films, including educational stuff, had that in their titles), magazines and some miscellaneous places. I also showed its usage over time (my earliest was 1930; theirs was 1924, I think).

“MW said it would not be simply the number of citations, but this would be part of their decision. They decided in favor, so I became one of those few people who have had a word entered in an MW dictionary. The company says it receives many requests each year, but very few people actually follow up and do the research.”
--------

From personal experience, I can add that one criterion that determines if a word is to be ensconced in the dictionary is whether or not the citations demonstrate that the word is being used widely enough that a gloss need not be included with it. For example, nearly every article that reported on the astronomical occurrence of a “blue moon” last year, included an explanation of the term, i.e. “the second full moon within a single calendar month”. This sense of the word traces back to an almanac published in the 19th century, but this sense of the word is still used so infrequently (once in a blue moon?), that most writers include an explanation (a gloss) when they use the word in print. The lexicographer tends to discount such uses as invalid citations for supporting a word’s entry in the dictionary.

You may well ask why all this resistance to including more words. The answer is simple. The dictionary is a massive tome, printed on thin paper in tiny print. There simply isn’t room for including every upstart Johnny-come-lately neologism that comes along. Only those words that have a proven track record are given a few lines of precious space in our lexicons.

Don’t be discouraged by all this. Some words make it into the dictionary seemingly overnight. Many computer terms have popped up like mushrooms and were included in the very next editions. Their instant ubiquity is the reason. In fact, lexicographers are busier than ever with all the new words. If your new word catches on, and gets a lot of internet use, who knows but that ‘elocy’ might not turn up in the dictionary next year. LOL, the acronym for "laughing out loud", made it into the _Encarte Dictionary of World English_, last year. If LOL can make it, who's to say what's next?