Words have meanings. One of my favorite things to do as a kid (I was a huge nerd, then as now) was to look up the definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary. The OED had great definitions of words that we didn’t use much in the US, but it also had remarkable word histories (etymologies), telling the stories of how the words came to be. Thus, I got an English lesson and a history lesson all at the same time. In the US, the definitive (pun intended) text for most young scholars like me was the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. And while the Merriam-Webster had etymologies, some of the words that developed in US English had unknown origins, many more than those whose origins were from Anglo-Saxon or Greco-Latin origins.
Take the word dord.
Many dictionaries (the OED included) are compiled by teams of word scholars who researched and examined word usage and origins. And those teams were experts not only in words but also in other, specific fields. For example, in compiling the Merriam-Webster, physicists were used to compile words from that field and vet them before submission to the dictionary editors. Dord was one of the words a scientists submitted to the editors for publication in the M-W for 1934. Dord, as submitted, was listed as a scientific abbreviation for density. It rested there between the definitions of dorcopsis (a small kangaroo species) and dore (something that is golden).
And thus dord was accepted and published for the next five years. Then, an editor, preparing for a new edition of the dictionary, noticed that there was no history for the word, no etymology. He made inquiries to the scientific community, but the answers he received were mystifying. It turns out that there is no such word as d-o-r-d in science or in any other discipline for that matter. So, eventually, the word was deleted from the dictionary after a few more years of appearing in print. However, that wasn’t the end of the matter. The dictionary editors were now worried that their abilities to catch words that may be spurious wasn’t what they thought it was, that their vetting processes were flawed somehow. An investigation was launched, and what that investigation found shows that even the best systems of making sure words are real can have their flaws.
Turns out that, in 1931, a chemistry editor for the dictionary by the name of Austin Patterson had indeed submitted the word for publication and did list it as having the definition of being an abbreviation for density. Because Patterson was a known research chemist, no one questioned the word. And that’s because Patterson’s intent was definitely not to deceive anyone. What had submitted to the dictionary was an attempt to expand on words the letter D can stand for in different fields.
His submission? “D or d–an abbreviation for density.” Patterson’s typewritten note was fine except he inadvertently put a space between the o and r in the word or. Instead of an upper case or lower case letter D, Patterson’s submission read as the word D-o-r-d to the next editor up the line.
Dord is now considered a “ghost word,” a word that exists but has no true definition. Interestingly, today’s Merriam-Webster includes the ghost word esquavalience–listed as being the avoidance of one’s responsibilities–as a word inserted to protect the book’s copyright.
The Rest of the Story 