In Which Dictionary.com Discusses the Greatest Typo Ever
Dictionary.com is one of my favourite websites. Audio files which demonstrate how to properly pronounce words? (Fun fact: if you go to “tomato”, they give you BOTH pronunciations) Paragraphs explaining the YEAR when a word first started being used? LOVE.
Today, I stumbled across this:
DordWord Origin & History1934, a ghost word printed in “Webster’s New International Dictionary” and defined as a noun used by physicists and chemists, meaning “density.”
In sorting out and separating abbreviations from words in preparing the dictionary’s second edition, a card marked “D or d” meaning “density” somehow migrated from the “abbreviations” stack to the “words” stack. The “D or d” entry ended up being typeset as a word, dord, and defined as a synonym for density. The mistake was discovered in 1939.
Dord: The fake word accidentally created when someone mixed up some piles. The mistake was discovered 5 years later. Who…who FOUND it? It was the 30’s. No one googled that shit. Some amazing person NOTICED. And now that fake word is on DICTIONARY.COM, MAKING IT TOTALLY A WORD NOW.
I, personally, think that “to dord” should denote when a person’s disorganization/carelessness causes a non-life-threatening typo or creates matter.
Obviously, life-threatening typos should have their own word.
- Julia Out
