Coming up on Word Matters, New Words.
I'm Emily Brewster and Word Matters is produced by Merriam-Webster in collaboration with New England Public Media.
On each episode,
Merriam-Webster editors explore some aspect of the English language from the dictionary's vantage point.
At Merriam-Webster,
we're constantly defining new words and revising the entries
for existing words to keep up with the language as it grows ever bigger.
But because a dictionary is like a big ship,
hard to steer and involving the efforts of many people, we release a set of updates all at once.
The most recent set of updates recently went live, and in this episode,
Peter Sokolowski and I give the inside scoop on the changes it brings.
The dictionary at merrimwebster.com just got a little bit bigger,
and it's always fun when we have a new update to the merrimwebster.com dictionary to talk about the words that have been added.
Now, some people think that we can just add words at any given time,
that a definer can draft a definition, there can be a final version of it,
and it just goes right up into the dictionary,
and it is instantly available for people to look at and to look up.
But that's not how we do things at all,
because there are implications from one entry to another entry,
and there are also multiple editors who have to play a part in the finalization and in the creation of any particular entry.