Dictionary 2.0: Wordnik.com Creates New Way to Find Words

Aug. 26, 2011— -- This week, just as Merriam-Webster announced "tweet" would be included in the 11th edition of their Collegiate Dictionary, a brand new word showed up -- where else? -- on Twitter.

'Bugnado,' referring to a swarm of bugs resembling a tornado, first surfaced when news organizations started tweeting about an "Amazing 'Bugnado'" caught on tape in Council Bluff, Iowa. Another "gag-inducing" bugnado showed up earlier this month in Missouri, and was featured on ABC News affiliate website WJLA.com.

Click on the video, and you'll find out exactly what 'bugnado' means.

You won't find the term "bugnado" in Merriam-Webster's dictionary. Traditional dictionaries, tied to the costly process of producing paper books, can't afford to add new words at a rapid pace.

But there is one dictionary where it does appear: Wordnik.com.

Erin McKean, the former editor in chief of the New Oxford American Dictionary and founder of Wordnik.com, describes it as "the biggest English dictionary ever."

Unlike urbandictionary.com, which specializes in street lingo, or UCLA's popular slang dictionary, Wordnik aims to include "all the words."

It's 10 times the size of the Oxford English dictionary, and the newest words are so new they don't yet have a definition. Instead, Wordnik provides links to places where the word was discovered.

Lately, "a whole bunch of fashion words have been making the rounds," McKean told ABCNews.com.

For example, 'flatform': a spring footwear trend. Search for it on Wordnik.com and you won't find a definition. But you will find several references that convey the word's meaning.

"We just accumulate example sentences -- we can archive these words and if they turn out to be important we can write a definition," McKean said, adding that all the site's definitions are licensed from traditional dictionaries.

The small staff of 18 at Wordnik, based in San Mateo, Calif., added at least half a million words to Wordnik over the past year. And now that Google's vice president of product management, Bradley Horowitz, has joined Wordnik's board of directors, and the company has secured $12.8 million in funding, Wordnik is uniquely poised to redefine the dictionary.

Unlike traditional dictionaries, the website features pronunciation sound files, related words, usage patterns and information derived from social networks.