I had seen this story back in December, but was reminded about it while watching a Chefography on
The Food Network about Rachael Ray. Love her or hate her, she is leaving her mark everywhere. I just don⿿t think that this is one of her great legacies.
One of her Rachaelisms has been added to the Oxford American College Dictionary.
⿿EVOO⿿ has received the stamp of approval by the editor-in-chief of American Dictionaries. The 2007 edition has our new word gracing its pages.
According to Erin McKean:
⿿In order for a word to get into the dictionary it has to be useful to people. It⿿s not just enough to be a fabulous celebrity to get your word in. You have to make a word that people like to use. There are words that are connected with celebrities that are not going to make it in the dictionary anytime soon; we⿿re not going to put in ⿿Brangelina.⿿ But ⿿EVOO⿿ we see people using. We have a big database of about a billion and a half English words. In that database we found evidence of ⿿EVOO⿿ being used and in more than half of the examples, ⿿Rachael⿿ is also in the same sentence.⿿
I have a hard time buying this explanation. Is a lazy acronym really a word? I admit that I am a bad offender when it comes to abusing the English language; but I would never want the literate world to condone my horrible misuse of my native tounge. I once thought that the French government was ridiculous to have the equivalent of the Word Police in their country, now I am beginning to think that maybe it is not too bad of an idea.
Well, this will probably be good news to Scrabble players.
