10-01-08 [ Betsy ]

Old news.

some of the best

double-tongued dictionary, grandiloquent dictionary, alan cooper's homophones, how to make up words, languagehat, language log, michael quinion, online etymology dictionary, word detective, word spy, wordorigins, wordsmith.org, mediatemple (ourhost), oracle of bacon, snopes, the straight dope.

if you know a word that should be in a dictionary but isn’t, submit it and we’ll add it to the pseudodictionary. if you know a real word and think it would fit in, you may submit it as well.

in general, submitted words shouldn’t be overtly drug-related or sexual, shouldn’t describe genitals or bodily functions, and shouldn’t be racist or otherwise hateful. we want to keep the site lighthearted and fun for everyone, so words such as those won’t be added. you may submit as many words as you like, but make sure they meet our guidelines.

a term will not necessarily be "excluded on the grounds that it might be considered offensive as a racial, ethnic, religious, sexual or [other] kind of slur," but it very well might be.

since this is a pseudo-dictionary and not a real dictionary, that gives us a lot of latitude. we’re the ones paying for the site, so that pretty much gives us carte blanche to make it whatever we want to and legitimately claim we haven’t misled you.

our primary focus will remain made-up words, but we’ll also use the site to tell you what comes up that interests us and what we have on our minds. we hope to run the site in a way that should be pleasing to any reasonable person, possibly even to you.

hd, marty, paul.

nota bene: we’ll always be with it enough to know . . . we’re not with it. appreciate us for what we are. if you don’t know what we are, that’s fine. we don’t either. but we know what we’re not: we’re not a real dictionary, not by any stretch of the imagination.

does the pseudodictionary (the pd to insiders, those in the know) have real words in it? of course it does. if you’re reading this, you’re reading real words. we even have some real words as entries in our lexicon. why? i dunno. chances are, though, it’s because someone found them to be interesting, for whatever reason.

remember what we said above: “we’re the ones paying for the site, so that pretty much gives us carte blanche to make it whatever we want to and legitimately claim we haven’t misled you.” if you want the site to be something other than what is it, make us an offer. we don’t want to sell the site -- but we would, given the right price and the right circumstances.