What strange impulse is it that tempts people to deny the existence of words they have just seen or heard in use, doing the job that words do? Plenty of people disdain gas guzzlers and green plastic footwear, but they don't try to tell you that Hummers and Crocs aren't real.
And yet, all over the Web, self-appointed executioners are vaporizing words, with varying degrees of assurance and even contempt. "English major here: there is no such word as spelt," says a helpful commenter who needs a dictionary and a couple of British friends.
"Even a mediocre writer knows that there is no such word as weaved," says another maven, unaware that weaved is not only centuries old but preferred in some senses: "The officers weaved in and out of traffic."
Sometimes, of course, such people simply mean that a word should be avoided because it's widely considered nonstandard English, like irregardless, theirselves, or boughten. Nonstandard is not the same as nonexistent, but you can see that English teachers might resort to hyperbole in hopes of wiping those lowbrow locutions from their pupils' mental slates.
And it's understandable that newer words -- especially if they look like jargon -- meet resistance. The people who say synergize, monetize, deliverables, and the like aren't "real words" don't actually expect economists to stop using monetize; they just want the term securely locked up in the financial ghetto.
Then there are the people who only want to say, as rudely as possible, that a word has been misspelled: "There's no such word as sufferage," they sniff. Still others don't know (or don't care) that their preference is local, not universal, so they rule licenced, towards, and orientate out of order.
But plenty of mysteries remain. Where would an English speaker come up with the notion that cleverer, addicting, or hearable is "not a word"? Or that gentlewoman (dated to 1230 in the Oxford English Dictionary), oared (synonymous with rowed since 1410), ironical (1576 -- it's older than ironic), resubjugate (1864), and twinkly (1884) aren't part of the language?
