The dark side…

This link from our weekly round-up post piqued my interest, particularly the bit about ‘dark matter’. It says that over half the words used in English books don’t appear in standard references (by which I assume they mean dictionaries). I find this kind of hard to believe, when references like the Macmillan English Dictionary (in print and online) use corpora (created using, among other things, books) to build their word lists.

It does go to show how quickly language changes, though, and the importance of dictionaries keeping up, so that students of English don’t get left behind. And, don’t forget resources like the Open Dictionary, which are your way of telling us what words should be included…