Date: Thu, 4 Jan 1996 12:24:27 -0500 From: Jesse T Sheidlower Subject: Re: Nominee: 1996 WOTY > > Thanks for your update, Jesse, re "outsourcing" being in "all four > college dictionaries." > > I did not know that there was a WOTY rule about dictionaries. Are there > other rules? Should I already know them? How do I remedy my deficiency? > > I ask, partly because it seems to me that last year some WOTYs were > words that had been around for a long time (though, of course, not > necessarily in dictionaries). John Algeo can correct me, but I think the rule is just that words that are already in those dictionaries used by ANW are not eligible. The word must be new _or_ newly prominent; the actual age is not necessarily relevant (e.g. 1992's WOTY, _not!_ attested regularly since 1900). (This has gone back and forth a number of times; it used by "New WOTY," but we just dropped the "New.") Re "outsource," I should point out that the definitions in most of the dictionaries are somewhat inaccurate; I think three of them only have the verbal noun, and several of them specify "a nonunion or foreign supplier" rather than simply anything done outside the company. No doubt the other three guys will revise their entries, as we are doing. Jesse Sheidlower Random House Reference