If it's not in the dictionary, it must not be a word

[Mullins, Bill AMRDEC]

In this post yesterday, I misspelled Keith Cowing's name.  My apologies.




> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mullins, Bill AMRDEC
> Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2006 6:04 PM
> To: 'American Dialect Society'
> Subject: If it's not in the dictionary, it must not be a word
>
>
> http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2006/06/experts_agree_s.html
>
> Keith Cowling writes a blog called "Nasa Watch", where he
> criticizes the government space agency.  Here, he's
> complaining about the use of "synergizing", which he can't
> find in dictionaries.
>
> To the extent that his point is that NASA folks may speak in
> a way that is obfuscatory, fine, but his example is pretty
> bad (and wrong, to boot).  "Synergize" is listed as a verb in
> his dictionaries, and the OED as well.
>
> Apparently he doesn't know that the various tenses sometimes
> are, but often are not, broken out separately from the root
> verb in dictionaries.
>

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