cromulent

[Paul Frank]

So what does a word have to do to get into the OED? Take cromulent,
which Jonathan Lighter once used in this forum: it gets 55,900
googlits (that's more than twice as many as the word googlit itself,
which isn't in the OED either). The locus classicus of cromulent is
The Simpsons in 1996. My guess is that there are hundreds of thousands
of perfectly good English terms in, say, Termium
(www.termiumplus.gc.ca) and IATE (iate.europa.eu) which are not listed
in the OED, mainly because they're too boring or too technical to
interest OED lexicographers. But cromulent is a fun word that has
gained a life of its own. And the indispensable Urban Dictionary
acknowledges this.

Paul

Paul Frank
Translator
Chinese, German, French, Italian > English
Espace de l'Europe 16
Neuchâtel, Switzerland
paulfrank at bfs.admin.ch
paulfrank at post.harvard.edu

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