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Oxford Dictionary responds by video to Victoria boy鈥檚 bid for levidrome

William Shatner tweet garners attention of Oxford
9510127_web1_171108-OBN-levidromeurbandictionary_2
Levi Budd (Submitted photo)

A Victoria to get a word in the dictionary prompted response from Oxford itself.

Six-year-old Levi Budd, a St. Micheals University School second-grader, made a bid to add levidrome to the dictionary after learning all about palindromes and discovering no readily used word for a word that spells another valid word backward 鈥 such as stop and pots.

He decided to create a new word featuring his name, and try to get it in the dictionary.

They started with a video, local Black Press media outlets and a social media campaign.

Oxford became aware of the campaign through a tweet from famed Canadian actor

鈥淪ince then it and have covered the levidrome campaign,鈥 says Oxford editor Rebecca Juganaru in the video.

鈥淟evi there are many new words every year. Some very clever ones and some very useful ones. We don鈥檛 add all of these words to our dictionary, we鈥檇 never sleep if we did. Instead we only add the words that get used by a lot of people for a long time.鈥

Many people know the word now, she noted, adding they鈥檙e impressed with how far the word has come in a five-week campaign. 鈥淟ots of people know your word and they know what it means which means levidrome is well on its way,鈥 Juganaru said.

Now they鈥檒l look for routine use in everyday language.

鈥淭hen all we do is wait and hope that people keep using your word,鈥 Juganaru said. 鈥淲e have a list of all the words we want to keep an eye on and levidrome is on that list in a hear or so if lots of people are still using your word it might well get into our dictionary.鈥

The word is already in the user-submitted online.


 


cvanreeuwyk@oakbaynews.com

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Christine van Reeuwyk

About the Author: Christine van Reeuwyk

Longtime journalist with the Greater Victoria news team.
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