A Victoria boy’s bid to get a word in the dictionary prompted response from Oxford itself.
Six-year-old Levi Budd, a St. Micheals University School second-grader, made a bid to add levidrome to the dictionary after learning all about palindromes and discovering no readily used word for a word that spells another valid word backward – such as stop and pots.
Oxford video
He decided to create a new word featuring his name, and try to get it in the dictionary.
They started with a video, local Black Press media outlets and a social media campaign.
lucky/levi video
Oxford became aware of the campaign through a tweet from famed Canadian actor William Shatner.
“Since then media outlets have picked up on it and have covered the levidrome campaign,” says Oxford editor Rebecca Juganaru in the video.
“Levi there are many new words every year. Some very clever ones and some very useful ones. We don’t add all of these words to our dictionary, we’d never sleep if we did. Instead we only add the words that get used by a lot of people for a long time.”
Many people know the word now, she noted, adding they’re impressed with how far the word has come in a five-week campaign. “Lots of people know your word and they know what it means which means levidrome is well on its way,” Juganaru said.
Now they’ll look for routine use in everyday language.
“Then all we do is wait and hope that people keep using your word,” Juganaru said. “We have a list of all the words we want to keep an eye on and levidrome is on that list in a hear or so if lots of people are still using your word it might well get into our dictionary.”
The word is already in the user-submitted urban dictionary online.
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