Hours of harmless fun with Merriam-Webster’s online Open Dictionary:
Welcome to Merriam-Webster’s Open Dictionary where you can 1) submit and share entries that aren’t already in our Online Dictionary, and 2) browse entries submitted by other members of the Merriam-Webster Online community.
Most recent additions at the time of posting this are Sith, Jedi, snipid, deambigulate and fencil. Deambigulate is curiously similar to disambiguate. Snipid (‘the smell of the autumn air – My it sure is snipid outside’) and fencil seem based on one unattributed quote each. This, I believe, is really true (readers, don’t try this at home, as they say):
stiffy (noun) : A 3.5″ floppy computer disk. Term used primarily & widely in South Africa, where the term ‘floppy’ refers mainly to the older, larger 5.25″ disks (as they where floppy, while the smaller, current ones are stiff).
Please insert the stiffy into the A: drive of the PC.
At least that illustration helps. Some illustrative sentences could refer to almost anything: ‘Have you scrubbed the Dunny yet Tim?’ (Sure enough, the big MW has two dunny entries, but not for this meaning).
We used to collect effle – English that no-one would ever use except in a book teaching foreign languages or English as a foreign language. Now I wonder if one could collect iffle – illustrative material that doesn’t.
(Posted by Mike on pt at Yahoo groups)