Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Howdy, Jazyk. I'm happy to weigh in here, but watch how cleverly I bounce the ball back into the lexicography court.

There will always be controversy over what constitutes the list of legal words in a given word game. Anything at a competition level, of course, has a governing body which determines the Official List and adjudicates disputes. Even the National Scrabble Association wrestles with the issue, though, since the US uses a smaller official list than the one used by competitors in all other English-speaking tournaments. (Check out this page on the Nat'l Scrabble Association site if you want to know more about the debate.)

For friendly games, the issue can be more contentious. Most serious casual -- an oxymoron, but you know what I mean -- Scrabble players use the Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary, Fourth Edition (OSPD4). Casual casual players will use whatever dictionary is at hand. Players who choose to play without determining the reference source first risk nasty arguments over whether "ain't" has an apostrophe or whether slang words like "sh*t" are legal. (It does, and they are.)

In the National Puzzlers League, for example, we use Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary 11th Edition (11C) as our standard reference, so for every word game we play we all default to that source as the final arbiter of disputes. (Puzzles using words outside that source are tagged accordingly.)

Regarding your specific question, I think you've inverted the two senses as defined in 11C (the online version of which we like to call MWED). (The latter, sense 2, gives the example, "amt is an abbreviation for amount".) Most word gamers would accept "abridgements" (bike for bicycle, bus for omnibus, auto for automobile) but not "abbreviations" (amt, etc., p.m.). (Since words with punctuation and capitalized words are usually not allowed, many acronyms and abbreviations get eliminated for that reason as well: MS-DOS, AM/FM, .pdf, etc., etc.)

But the bottom line will always be what makes it into the default reference source, and what its function is, according to that source. So here's where I bounce the ball back to Martha, tennis lover that she is:

- How do lexicographers decide when a word makes the transition from acronym or abbreviation to full-fledged "word" status?

Radar and snafu, for example, are no longer abbreviations, though they began that way. BIOS, on the other hand (meaning Basic Input/Output System) is still called an "abbreviation" in 11C. (RAM, meaning "random access memory", is in limbo: its listed as "abbreviation or noun"! It doesn't matter, of course, since "ram" in its other meanings is perfectly useable in games, but it's a curious example of a liminal word.)

- Would a word like "OK" (listed as an adjective, not an abbreviation, in 11C) ever become "ok" (lower-case, and thus Scrabble-usable)? Does pronunciation - "oh-kay" vs. "ock" - make a difference here?

Thanks for your question, Jazyk. I have one for you - how did someone with what looks like an Eastern European name end up with Portuguese as a native language?

Greg, one of the Puzzle Guys