Merriam Webster says....

I received some news today and thought National Association of the Deaf (NAD) would like to know about it. Not very long ago NAD made an effort to submit a letter of recommendation to Merriam Webster and asked them to add 'audism' into the dictionary.

Someone contacted Merriam Webster and inquired about the letter and stated his opinion on the matter, making it clear that he did not support NAD's letter. In turn he received a response as follow;

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05/10/2010

Dear XXXXX:

Thanks for your e-mail. We do not take petitions into consideration when entering words into our dictionaries. To know more about the defining process, you may want to visit http://www.merriam-webster.com/help/faq/words_in.htm.

Cordially,
Merriam-Webster Editorial Department,
Merriam-Webster, Inc.

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From the sound of it, NAD did not understand the process. According to a Board Member of NAD, NAD spent approximately six years working on this subject and ultimately produced this letter of recommendation with the assistance of 1,000 members forum. End result? Today we learned how ineffective it was.

Simply put, Merriam Webster do not take petition or letter of recommendations in order to consider new words to be added to the dictionary. Now, how does a word get into a Merriam-Webster dictionary? This is one of the questions Merriam-Webster editors are most often asked.

1) The answer is simple: usage.

2) Tracking word usage.

3) To decide which words to include in the dictionary and to determine what they mean, Merriam-Webster editors study the language as it's used. They carefully monitor which words people use most often and how they use them.

What does it mean for NAD and those who want to add 'audism' into the dictionary? One, use it often. And yes, it usually will mean 'recklessly used' if one really wanted to push it. You might get lucky and have this word added into the dictionary one day but then you'll be doing it recklessly and it will not be without a price, that of degrading the value of the word. By this I mean you could always push it so hard, as in abusing the word the way you've been doing it in order to have this term added into the dictionary. BUT the word would lose value by the time you're done.

In short, you can't fake it through. If you do, you'll devalue the word.

Furthermore, there are so many different interpretations on what audism should really mean therefore at this time it would only confuse the scholars / editors at Merriam Webster, thanks to those who decided to use the term prematurely. Their decision to rush the usage of the term only produced one result. Greater confusion and greater debates therefore it'll only confuse the scholars / editors. My hat's off to you deafhoodized people for one more example of reckless action.

The underlying problem remains the same. Lack for strategic planning and execution. I've seen it again and again since day one. Day one? Since my tenure with Deaf Bilingual Coalition. Some things never change.