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AskAndAnswer Posted 13 years ago
Grammar

words or not words?

Hi,
I have a question regarding the following words:

insuppressive

luringly

pullulative

stoutheartedly

Spellchecker has notified me that these are not real words, however, when I checked them in online dictionaries they came up. What accounts for this?

I am using them in poetry so I am wondering if it is OK?

Thanks,
David
  

Top answer

Spell-check programs have a defined list of words in their dictionaries; they do not contain all words. I looked up insuppressive in a dictionary of mine and it was not contained therein; however, in a larger unabridged dictionary it was listed. The absence from the smaller dictionary does not mean the word is not a real word.

— KJinCali79

  • Spell-check programs have a defined list of words in their dictionaries; they do not contain all words.
  • I looked up insuppressive in a dictionary of mine and it was not contained therein; however, in a larger unabridged dictionary it was listed.
  • The absence from the smaller dictionary does not mean the word is not a real word.
  • A spell-check dictionary functions similarly.
  • Because these words are not common, and some would say obsolete, it is likely they are not included in the spell-check dictionary.
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2 Answers
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Spell-check programs have a defined list of words in their dictionaries; they do not contain all words. I looked up insuppressive in a dictionary of mine and it was not contained therein; however, in a larger unabridged dictionary it was listed. The absence from the smaller dictionary does not mean the word is not a real word. A spell-check dictionary functions similarly. Because these words a
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Here is some information from the American Corpus, a compendium of citations from magazines, literature, academic journals and the media, 1990-2012. This database contains 450 million words and is used by linguists who study language:

luringly - two occurrences
pullulative - no occurrences; there is one occurrence for the noun pullulation (a real inkhorn term!)
stoutheartedly - n
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