Collins, as in the dictionary publishers, have come up with a novel twist on the standard (and perhaps rather hackneyed) ‘new words since our last edition’ formula as a way of attracting media attention (and a mention on the Accuracy Matters website, for that matter). They’ve been inviting people to make up their own words and send them in for ‘editorial evaluation’. If your word clears that hurdle, they publish it on their online version, and you get a name-check in the definition as the originator. You used to win stuff as well, but they’ve stopped doing that.

I guess it’s a fairly harmless piece of fun, if that’s the sort of thing that interests you, but is it a good idea? Of course language is constantly evolving – it’s something that appeals more to some people than to others, although there’s no realistic way of stopping it. The question is whether it really needs encouraging in this way. It seems to me that there’s a perfectly healthy process of Darwinian natural selection in place as it is, with new words emerging and making it through to adolescence if they do something useful or describe something new, and falling away if they don’t.

So, although at Accuracy Matters we take a keen interest in the evolution of English, I don’t think we’ll be sending anything off to Collins in the near future. Unless they start giving stuff away again, that is.

Photo by Sven Brandsma on Unsplash