Half million 'Words with Spaces' missing from dictionaries
6 hours ago
- #word-games
- #linguistics
- #dictionaries
- Nearly half a million compound phrases with spaces are missing from dictionaries.
- Traditional dictionaries focus on individual words, ignoring many multi-word expressions (MWEs).
- Merriam-Webster covers only 18% of the top 10,000 MWEs, dropping to 7% by 100K.
- Wiktionary improves coverage but still misses many MWEs, especially transparent and semi-opaque ones.
- English has about 250 billion possible two-word combinations, with 15% being plausible.
- Some MWEs carry conceptual weight beyond their parts, like 'hot dog' or 'red tape'.
- Print dictionaries cover only 2-3% of MWEs, while Wiktionary covers 30%.
- Named entities and technical terms are better covered by Wikipedia and Wiktionary.
- The line between 'word' and 'phrase' is fuzzy, with some phrases functioning as single semantic units.
- Lexicographers used substitutability tests to decide which phrases to include, favoring established terms.
- Wiktionary volunteers, unconstrained by space, focused on phrasal verbs and everyday idioms.
- For word games, MWEs could be playable if they name a thing, not just based on length.