A question that often comes up when discussing unusual words is whether a word is a “real” word. There isn’t a pat answer in English, since there’s nobody in charge to decide which words are and aren’t real. One big hurdle is “being in the dictionary,” but that’s a pretty gray area too. There are dozens of different dictionaries — maybe hundreds — and they differ on how quickly they include new words. A new construction will appear in the Urban Dictionary right away, while the Oxford English Dictionary admits only a few new words per year. Not only that, but dictionaries are “trailing indicators” of language; they really only include words that are already part of the language.
The next logical question, of course, is “what is the language”? The idea of a language is generally that two people who speak the same one (or think they do) should be able to understand each other. But languages vary regionally, and dialects can stray far enough from one another that two people who ostensibly speak “English” might find it quite difficult to understand each other.
A pretty current idea in linguistics is the “idiolect.” “Idiolect” is compound word put together out of “idio-“ (distinct, as in “idiosyncracy”) and “-lect” (having to do with language, as in “dialect”). An “idiolect” is a language used by just one person. Everybody has their own idiolect, made up of all the ways you personally use language, from the vocabulary you use to the length of your sentences, the grammar you use (or ignore), and so forth. In this conception, which has been current in linguistics since the word “idiolect” was coined by Bernard Bloch in the late 1940s, a language is the sum of the idiolects of all of its speakers. If that’s the case, all you really have to do to add a word to the language is to use it yourself. Thus in a theoretical sense, it’s already entered the language. On the other hand, it will definitely help if you manage to get some other people to use it, and if some lexicographers notice and include it in their dictionaries.
By the way, some of those other “-lects” are kind of interesting too. An “acrolect” is the dialect, among a related group of dialects, that most closely resembles the original or “standard” dialect from which all the others diverged. This evidently comes from the linguistic technique of creating a sort of family tree of dialects to map out which ones were derived from others. The one at the top of the chart is the “acrolect,” and it’s called the ACROlect simply because it’s at the top.
A “basilect” is the opposite of an “acrolect;” it’s the dialect on the linguists’ chart that’s the furthest from the original source. And you’re probably thinking, “OK then, they probably have another term for the ones in the middle of the chart.” And you’re right; the ones in the middle are “mesolects.” These are, in a way, the ultimate in jargon because all three terms relate mostly to the chart linguists use to plot collections of dialects. If you find somebody whose idiolect includes all those other “-lects”, you’re probably talking to a speaker of an “isolect,” which is a dialect that’s off to the side in the chart. It’s almost a language on its own, not particularly related to any of the others!
