this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2025
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Not The Onion
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Then is it even a word?
Sometimes I make nearly incomprehensible screeches. They have no meaning, but something they express how I feel, is that a word?
Also tradwife is a shortform, it’s not a word.
No (or at least it depends on your definition of a word). For being added to the Cambridge dictionary, it is not in general or widespread usage. Your random screech is not historically or socially worthy of being documented. It likely has no suitable examples for coinage. You screech has no linguistic staying power, it wont be used by you and others in a few years time.
English does not have an academy. It does not have a rulebook that defines exactly what it is. Unlike languages like French (as an example ... with all of the social linguistics that comes with that). The dictionary is a record of how the language is being used by a notable proportion of the population.
Skibidi is one of 6000 words being added, this year alone.
There are lots of shortform, abbreviations and colloquialisms in the dictionary. If they are individually used/cited as words on their own basis then they can be listed in the dictionary.
i think if you think of the dictionary as the big list describing how words are actually being used recently instead of the big list defining how words should be used and this makes a lot more sense. does that weaken the meaning of the word 'definition?' a little bit but its high time it had its comeuppance, used way too literally imo... figuratively speaking, of course. we're not french, the language isnt set in stone.
Skint is also a short form. It’s been in the dictionary a while.
Hasn't skint been around for a century? It's not quite a short form though, it's a variant of skinned, and almost the same length.