this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2025
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Because Merriam Webster creates and produces the dictionary of the English language. They're literally the one who decides if a word is official. Their retort is succinct.
Nope. They document what words are in common use. English is a "form follows usage" kind of language, where popularity of a word makes it correct. That's why "literally" can mean its own antonym and influencers get to make up new meanings for Fetch and Mid.
Less architectural, more suicide note.
This is true, they describe themselves as descriptive rather than prescriptive: https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/descriptive-vs-prescriptive-defining-lexicography
They did say "official" though.
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Partly right, but they don't decide if a word is "official" (whatever that's supposed to mean). For a word to be a so-called "real" word it only has to be in common use among some group, dictionaries simply document words that have been in common use. Merriam-Webster is an authoritative record of words in use specifically in US English (with some records for other English variants and dialects, I think? ) but they are not a prescriptivist organisation. A word which appears in their dictionary is almost certainly a word that is or was in use in US English but a word that doesn't appear might also be a real word, particularly if it's a relatively new word or meaning.
So with that in mind, arguing that a word is real when it doesn't appear in the dictionary can be valid in some cases, but arguing that a word isn't real when it does appear in a dictionary (like Brian did) is generally not smart.
tl;dr, a dictionary, not the dictionary; not all English; "official" doesn't make sense here; in some (but not this) cases disagreeing is valid.
How is just tagging him by name, and repeating his first name succinct? I don't get any sort of meaning from that response, it reads like a mistyped response.
Just imagine your mom saying your full name with an audible full stop, right after you said/did something a bit dumb
But it wasn't just saying his first name. It was "First Last First"
the 'first last' is just how tagging a user works.
Oooh, I wonder if that's part of what's confusing the other guy. At this point I just completely filter out the tag when I'm reading a post like this, since very few people intend to incorporate it into the comment.
As someone who's managed to never use Twitter, it was very confusing. I guess it's one of those things you pick up subconsciously and never really think about once you've used the system enough.