I was talking to someone yesterday about an individual in business....they asked me to describe them...the word 'cowellesque' immediately came to mind to describe them - someone who speaks candidly to another individual about their performance, style or general persona, with no thought whatsoever towards that person's personal feelings.
So I sent an email to the Oxford English Dictionary seeing if they would publish my new word!! Amazingly they replied with the following!
Quote:
Dear Mr Lamp,
Thank you very much for your e-mail to the Oxford English Dictionary.
It may interest you to know that before a word is even considered for inclusion in the OED, we have to have at least 5 published instances of it, from a variety of sources. These can vary from novels to newspaper articles to radio scripts and so on. It is also
essential that the word demonstrates a reasonable longevity (5 years as an absolute minimum).
I have had a quick check on our in-house databases and we have not yet collected any examples of 'Cowellesque', although I did find a few examples on an external database of newspapers to which we subscribe.
I have passed this on for some further research. Thank you once again for writing.
Yours sincerely,
Fiona McPherson
Senior Editor OED.
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So I am now going to write some radio scripts, articles for newspapers a novel and hope that Mr. Cowell doesn't become a big softy and stop hurting peoples feelings! 8) :lol:
November 15th, 2005, 02:54 PM
A New Word 
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