Did you know there is a word purgatory?

Apparently, the Oxford English Dictionary keeps a list of words submitted for inclusion in the dictionary but rejected. Some words spend time in this lexical limbo and eventually are included in the dictionary, and some do not. Here's a short list of some of the words that have so far not made it out, including earworm (a catchy tune that runs through your head) and wurfing (surfing the internet at work). The older words are stored on file cards, but the new ones are stored digitally. Any suggestions for naming this repository? I kind of like word purgatory myself.

Counting Up to the Millionth Word

According to the Global Language Monitor, a new word is created in English on average every 98 minutes. This means that we should reach one million words on about June 10th of this year. What do new words look like? How about Bushism, interpandemic, microblogging, and defriend? These are a few of the words that have appeared recently. How do we know when a word becomes a word? As you might imagine, there are different opinions on this topic. Does it have to appear in the dictionary, or just be understood in conversation? This BBC video addresses that question. There's an absolutely delightful kids book on that topic also, Andrew Clements' Frindle, which I recommend to anyone.