I may be one of the few word philosphers or perhaps a lay-scientist of word theory, considering the overt nerdiness that this entry reveals.
As an official reference on the subject, I’m making an entry about my creation of the word neologism, to squiptipadoogleboinkaflop. In this form, it is a verb describing the action of, purposefully or inadvertently, revealing a belief that dictionaries are the end-of-discussion source for whether a word is a word or not. A negative connotation regarding someone who believes this is not implied, but merely a matter of simple existence. Edit: As a secondary definition or corrollary, it could also be used to describe the action of revealing that one is a prescriptivist rather than a descriptivist.
Dictionaries are instead a type of newspaper that reports on words and usages of words that are common for the time the publication is printed and do not dictate “this is how it shall be” in the same way that standard daily newspapers do not state how an event will unfold, but how events have been reported to unfold.
I suspect the biggest reason that dictionaries are looked upon as the ultimate say in whether or not a word is considered a word is due to word games that call upon a specific set of words that are for legal use in the game — such as Scrabble’s rule that limits proper names, foreign words and contractions from legal game play. Scrabble even publishes its own official dictionary. I think this is the reason given for the common misperception that “orange, silver and month have no rhymes,” but is only true if obscure scientific terms, appreviations and proper place names are excluded (even though they are words as far as basic understandings of what “word” tends to mean — try sporage, chilver and grunth). A simple way to defeat this perception is simply to look up the word word. The defintion of word from any given dictionary is remarkably unlikely to contain any specific limitation that, in order to determine whether a word is legitimately a word or not, one must find it in a dictionary of some kind. I think we can both agree that a word from the Choctaw language, which has few dictionaries for it, contains many potential words not found in said dictionaries.
My infinitve, to squiptipadoogleboinkaflop (SKWIP-tip-puh-DOO-gull-BO-een-kuh-flop), is to directly or indirectly reveal a belief that words must come from a dictionary in order to be considered legitimate. For instance, as I wrote in this Ask MetaFilter thread (rather cryptically now that I read it again), remarks, “One who thinks Blorange, one of many rhymes for Orange, doesn’t count as a word because it’s the proper name for a hill in the UK, has just squiptipadoogleboinkaflopped.” The state of believing this idea could be squiptipadoogleboinkaflopism whereas my belief that a dictionary does not dictate (ha) whether words are words or not could thusly be asquiptipadoogleboinkaflopism — in the way that atheism subverts theism — making me an asquiptipadoogleboinkafloppist.
In addition, I have just today decided that to ragnakoriake (RAG-nuh-KO-ree-ake) is to reveal directly or indirectly a belief that a word outside of any context has a default defintion, notably being the first entry of its listing in a dictionary. Dictionaries do generally list, as the first of any number of alternate definitions, the most commonly employed definition of a word outside of a given context. However, when asked what a word means, an implied, “the word ___ could mean many things, some of I have known to include…” should be understood, rather than a common suggestion that a word without any particular context means something specific. Potential exclusions to this rule could plausibly be the species used to represent a specific organism, although when used as an infinitive could also mean something else, such as “to act in a way an [organism] would.” Ragnakoriakology, ragnakoriakism, ragnakoriakers.
the ablestmage press 