Wordwatching: How to Break into the Dictionary

Alex Horne loves words. He loves them so much, in fact, that he decided to invent his own—to create a brand new verbal concept and successfully implant it into the English language, and the Oxford English Dictionary . But breaking into the dictionary was going to take more than just a gentle word in the ear of the OED 's editor, as Alex soon discovered. Evidence was required—Alex needed proof that his word was in print and used by more people than just him and his mom. He needed, to use the dictionary's word, a "corpus" of examples, so a corpus he resolved to create. And he gave himself 1,000 days in which to do it. This is the story of what happened next. Did Alex get a word in the OED ? What is a pratdigger? Are you already using one of Alex's words without realizing it? You won't regret spending your hard-earned honk on this hugely entertaining book full of wordy trivia and funny tales of verbal invention.