Talk201417 min853×480

Anne Curzan: What makes a word “real”?

TED.com

Education

Clips are not offered for this film: the Internet Archive does not let a page read its file (no CORS headers), so it cannot be cut in your browser.

About

One could argue that slang words like ‘hangry,’ ‘defriend’ and ‘adorkable’ fill crucial meaning gaps in the English language, even if they don't appear in the dictionary. After all, who actually decides which words make it into those vaulted pages? Language historian Anne Curzan gives a charming look at the humans behind dictionaries, and the choices they make on a constant basis.

Archive
Internet Archive, in TED Talks
Licence or status
CC BY-NC-ND 3.0, as the Internet Archive states it.
Credit
TED.com
Language
English
Who can watch
The archive gives no rating. Invisible Network shows it to Tweens profiles and older, judged from its collection and subjects. How films are placed