Prizes and Pitfalls of Computerized Searching for New Words for Dictionaries

Picture Sir James Murray seated in his editorial office pondering the worthiness for entry of the word appendicitis. This should present no problem for him. For, with hindsight, we can see its obvious importance; after all, it is commonplace today even in school dictionaries. In the last five years of The New York Times and the last thirty months of Time, seventy articles have at least one mention of appendicitis. Surely Sir James would enter it. However, Sir James was not entirely his own man. Only eight years before the Vice Chancellor of Oxford University had sent Sir James a set of "suggestions" to help the editor of the dictionary. These suggestions offered the observation that slang and technical words might be included only if they were used in literature. Sir James foresaw the basic problem: language is unpredictable. Beyond the fact of life obvious to us that language will change with or without our approval, there is no way to foretell what inventions or fads will impose upon us the urge to invent new words. Murray's quandary started because he had the suggestion that appendicitis was a "crack-jaw medical word." To cure his case of appendicitis he consulted the Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University. Appendicitis was consigned to oblivion. A scant eleven years later Edward VIFs coronation was delayed: he had appendicitis. The word was on everyone's tongue. Had Sir James had a crystal ball, he would surely have included appendicitis in the OED.