One man's quest to coin a new word. If bootylicious can get in 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 ...
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One man's quest to coin a new word. If bootylicious can get in 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.
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