English speakers already contain over a million words at our disposal – so why are we adding 1000 novel ones a year to the lexicon? And how?As dictionary publishers never tire of reminding us,our language is growing. Not content with the million or so words they already contain at their disposal, English speakers are adding novel ones at the rate of around 1000 a year. Recent dictionary debutants include blog, and grok,crowdfunding, hackathon, and airball,e-marketing, sudoku, or twerk and Brexit.
But these represent just a sliver of the tip of the iceberg. According to Global Language Monitor,around 5400 novel words are created every year (Oxford Dictionaries Online, evidently using different criteria, and reckon 1.8bn). It’s only the 1000 or so deemed to be in sufficiently widespread use that make it into print. Who invents these words,and how? What rules govern their formation? And what determines whether they catch on?
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Source: theguardian.com