Recently, part of my day involves doing a technical review of a book about web mashups and I’m doing it with a basically virgin install of Open Office. What I found interesting about that process today is that many of the words used in the book aren’t considered words—at least, they’re not in Open Office’s standard dictionary (or Firefox’s). I had to add them to the spelling dictionary. Some of these are in published dictionaries and some aren’t. Does anyone know how long it typically take for “new” words like these to become commonly accepted in a language?

blog blogger blogging weblog wiki mashup username google (I know, it’s a pronounproper noun—or is it? Have you googled anything lately?) trackback plugin aggregator (aggregate [verb] is common but aggregator [noun] is not) app (slang, but very common)

Comments

1. Lady S on 2007-03-12 16:25:18 wrote: Google is a proper noun, and I believe they are making an effort to get the word to use it as such. I recently read an article about using it as a verb and how Google (the corporation) is actively trying to get people to only use Google when they mean Google and not when they mean searching using another engine. Not that I am the word police, but you did ask. It seems to me it takes so long to get into a dictionary that we have moved onto other newer words.

2. tanyetta on 2007-03-12 17:20:05 wrote: i’m still in awe that you install virgin versions of applications. you’re my hero! :)

3. The Hungry Ghost on 2007-03-19 00:43:42 wrote: Wiki has just made it into the latest version of the Oxford English Dictionary. You should not use Google (TM) as a generic term for search, or they could lose the trademark, and other companies could refer to their search products as google. Asprin is an example of this - Asprin used to be a trademark, until it was lost die to overuse.

4. Nichole on 2007-03-19 11:00:14 wrote: Ooooooh what a touchy subject for someone like myself. In college we were taught that the people dictate what is in the dictionary, not the other way around. Therefore, it is only a matter of time before words such as “blog” and “google” are accepted/published in dictionaries. Additionally, not every dictionary is the same, as I’m sure you’re well aware. Some dictionaries may include such words, some may not. This is life. This is why one must own at least 2 different kinds of dictionaries (IMHO). As far as Google putting up a stink about the trademark and not allowing the word to be a verb, this is ridiculous. Sure, it’ll be sad that such a huge corporation will lose some tiny fraction of money because the masses are using their name as a verb, but then, what about words like “Kleenex” (often used universally to mean “tissue”) or using “Coke” or “Pepsi” as all-encompassing words for soda? Shouldn’t the folks at Google just be happy that their search engine is the premiere engine on the web, so much so that we feel the need to refer to any web search as “googling”? And anyway, I don’t personally say I “googled” anything unless the searching did occur at Google.com. ;)