if a series of letters has a pronunciation and an understood meaning, then it's a word.


The key here is understood. TEd has it right here, to be a word, among other qualifications, a significant group of people agree on a meaning.

Conversate is another example. The vast majority of people can rattle on about its not being a word since we have the word converse but if a significant group of people use it to mean something other than converse then there is no valid reason to deny it wordhood.