(October 28, 2012 at 12:58 pm)Stimbo Wrote: Well, it's not that the lexicographers sit around a table with a list of words and a pot of coffee, trying to come up with suitable definitions which then enter the language. It's more the reverse, actually.
Well, yes, of course, rather than dictionaries being definitions of words people have "made" maybe I should have said "influenced" instead. Or maybe I should have said that the words developed or evolved culturally from people. But the words were added to dictionaries by people so they were actually made, in a sense.