Wordexistence

Wordexistence is a concept in linguistics and lexicography that describes whether a given sequence of letters and sounds is recognized as a word within a language or its dictionary. It encompasses conventional usage, morphosyntactic behavior, and presence in a community’s vocabulary, and it has practical implications for dictionaries, corpora, and language-processing systems.

Assessing wordexistence involves several criteria. Attestation in reliable data sources (texts, speech, transcripts), stable orthography, and consistent grammatical use are common benchmarks. Some forms exist only as neologisms or nonce words; with sustained uptake they may gain official status. In many lexicons, variants and inflected forms may be treated as related forms of a lemma, while others treat them as separate entries. Non-existent forms lack sustained attestation and are typically viewed as creative coinages, errors, or placeholders until evidence accumulates.

Wordexistence is dynamic. Languages borrow terms from other languages, generate new terms through technology and culture, and retire outdated forms. The inventory of existing words can rise or fall as usage shifts and new evidence appears in corpora and digital media. This fluidity means that what counts as an established word can change over time.

In practical terms, the concept guides dictionary policy, spell-checkers, and language-model vocabularies. Lexicographers weigh attestation and usage frequency to decide inclusion, while NLP applications rely on word lists to tokenize text and assign meanings. Non-existent or uncertain forms are typically excluded from standard resources until sufficient evidence supports their existence. For illustration, existing words include “existence” and “computer”; a coined form like “flarb” demonstrates a nonce that lacks established existence.