Words from Popular Literature Not in OED

Dave Wilton dave at WILTON.NET
Wed Nov 8 14:36:30 UTC 2006


Exactly. I was just trying to think of examples of words that appear in a
single, recent work of popular literature. You don't find "muggle" outside
Rowling's books and associated commentary.

--Dave Wilton
  dave at wilton.net


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Benjamin Zimmer
Sent: Wednesday, November 08, 2006 4:29 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Words from Popular Literature Not in OED

On 11/8/06, Barnhart <barnhart at highlands.com> wrote:
>
> >"Muggle" might merit an entry pretty much solely on the fact that so many
> >people read the Potter books and the word can be found in many
> >commentaries and press pieces about the books.
>
> See The Barnhart Dictionary Companion (Vol. 13.2).

"Muggle" is already in the OED, added in the March 2003 batch of
entries. It's also NOAD2.


--Ben Zimmer

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