Micronutia

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, how you doing? This is John from East Hampton.

Hello, John. Welcome. East Hampton, New York.

-huh.

Great to have you on the show. What’s up?

I had a little bit of a debate with some friends one night over drinks.

We were talking, and sometimes I just make up words.

This one friend of mine, Bill, he shot back at me, and he said, that’s not even a word.

I said, well, it is now.

And he said, no, it’s not. It’s not a dictionary I know.

I said, well, how do you think words get into a dictionary?

And, you know, we got into this whole debate, and then he said, well, if you use that word scrabble, you would lose.

And I said, we’re playing life by board game rules.

You know, how could you possibly say that?

Yeah, yeah.

And so, like, I used the word micronition, right?

And I turned to a friend of mine.

I said, you understand what I meant when I said that, right?

So I communicated a thought.

You understood it.

It’s a word.

But then we got to talking, like, what makes a word really a word?

You couldn’t have said it better.

But let me ask you, micronutia means what?

It’s smaller than minutia.

Right.

Very good.

And I understood that.

I think I understood that.

Yeah.

Right.

So the Bill guy was giving you a hard time.

He’s a gracious host.

He has a whole bunch of us over at his house every Friday.

But he loves to take a stand and then stick with it, and he wouldn’t budge.

I even called him back.

I said, Bill, please tell me that you’re not serious about this word thing.

I am too.

I’m serious.

I’m like, okay, then.

I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to go to the experts on this one.

You have arrived at the right place.

Because we are on your side.

Yes, we agree with you.

We are back in your play, buddy.

Yeah.

If you can say it and the meaning is understood, it becomes a word.

Right.

Now, granted, it’s not in the dictionary.

But as you said, how do words get in the dictionary?

It carries meaning clearly.

Right.

And it sounds like Bill engages in micronutia all the time, right?

He’s always splitting hairs.

There we go.

This is exactly what happens.

He splits hairs about everything.

And at this point, I said, you know, Bill, I’m really not interested in this micronutia.

At which point he said, you know, that’s not even a word.

Yeah, it’s a common myth that somehow the dictionaries are the final word on what’s a word.

It’s absolutely not true.

The dictionaries contain the barest fraction of all the English words, even the Oxford English Dictionary, which is vast.

Even the upcoming Webster’s Unabridged, the new edition they’re working on, they don’t have anywhere near all the words in English.

They can’t. It’s just not enough space and time.

And, you know, before the time when we could all Wikipedia and go to Merriam-Westers online, I used to keep at least three different dictionaries in my house because there were variations of words or meanings that just never made it to one dictionary or another.

Right, and some people like to say that the dictionary isn’t the social register of words.

It’s the phone book of words.

It’s what’s out there.

And with your help, Micronutia is…

Well, Micronutia is already out there.

I see a lot of hits on Google, actually.

Yeah, if you Google it, you’ll find it in books and blogs and news articles.

And it’s always kind of in a register of English that indicates it’s not official.

You would lose at Scrabble.

You would.

But the Scrabble dictionary contains not that many words, relatively speaking.

It’s nowhere near complete.

It’s like a specialty dictionary.

It’s kind of like picking a slang dictionary off your shelf and saying, if it’s not in here, it’s not a word.

It’s kind of arbitrary.

For the purposes of the game of Scrabble, the Scrabble dictionary is fine.

For life, no.

No.

Micronutia conforms to the morphology and the rules of English.

It is a perfectly cromulent English word.

That’s terrific to hear.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for coming, John.

Okay, John.

Thanks.

All right, guys.

Love your show.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

I bet he loves it even more now.

It’s a common argument.

It’s the dictionary defense.

It’s not in the dictionary.

Right.

You’re like arguing semantics when you can’t argue the facts.

Right.

That’s one of those kind of weaselly arguing techniques, right?

Yes, indeed.

And we have to remember that dictionaries are put together by humans, such as yourself, Grant.

And we all know that I’m error-prone.

Well, you’re perfect, right?

No, but they’re put together by humans with a limited amount of time, a limited amount of money, and a limited amount of space, right?

There are errors in there.

There are errors.

Indeed.

Ask me anytime. I’ll point them all out to you.

Ask us anything. Call us at 877-929-9673.