findability--a real word?!

Arnold Zwicky zwicky at STANFORD.EDU
Wed Aug 25 17:56:07 UTC 2010


On Aug 25, 2010, at 10:40 AM, David Barnhart wrote:

> An e-mail in today's barrage of messages was entitled "Findability fake
> word, real problem.  Not in OED, New Words Concordance, nor the Dictionary
> Companion.  But, _findable_ is in OED (c1449)...  _Findability_ certainly is as much a real
> word as many of the stunt words that are noticed in the WOTY exercise.

i thought the generalization was with an adjective in -able you got the derived abstract noun in -abil-ity for free.  innovate _discussable_ and you get _discussability_.  surely only a small number of -abil-ity nouns merit tracking and citations in the OED.

arnold

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