Can I just string a couple letters together, slap on a meaning and call it a word?
Or is their a process it has to go through to be considered a word?
Do all new words need to be traced back to an existing word?
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Sign up to join this communityCan I just string a couple letters together, slap on a meaning and call it a word?
Or is their a process it has to go through to be considered a word?
Do all new words need to be traced back to an existing word?
Can I just string a couple letters together, slap on a meaning and call it a word? Or is their a process it has to go through to be considered a word?
For all practical intents and purposes, yes you can — if the amount of people who'll be considering it a "word" is limited to just one (that is, you). If you make a word out of existing morphemes, that just haven't been arranged like so merely due to chance, but whose meaning is inferrable by natives, that's clearly permissible — and happens somewhat 'frequently' in scientific circles when new terminology is coined or introduced.
Do all new words need to be traced back to an existing word?
This is, in essence, untenable — we know that there was a time before human language, and as such no word can truly be traced back to an infinite tree of descent. Now, more realistically what you're asking: no, words can be coined all the time.
If your coinage merely looks like a word, but has no inferrable meaning (such as 'stralts' in English), it is highly unlikely it will catch on.
Words do exist outside of dictionaries — but to get into them, they have to exist and be in use.