Merriam-Webster new words vs Microsoft Word
Merriam-Webster have released a list of new words they’ve added to the dictionary. Office Watch is always interested to compare these lists with the Microsoft Office / Word dictionary to see which words have been included in Microsoft’s spell checker.
There are a few surprises. ‘Looksmaxxing’ is quite new but has already been added to the Microsoft Office dictionary.
On the other hand ‘crashout’ and especially ‘Rickroll’ have been around for some time but not enough for Microsoft to notice.
US, UK and Australian English
US, UK and Australian English in Word all have the same spelling results with only five words not listed in the current Word dictionary.
Many of the ‘new words’ are two-word phrases and one is an acronym.
Who manages the Microsoft Office dictionaries?
Microsoft makes its own undisclosed decision about when words enter its proofing systems, and it publishes neither a source list nor a useful change log.
The Office main spelling dictionaries are a proprietary word list supplied with the proofing tools for the selected language and regional variety, such as English (United States), English (United Kingdom), or English (Australia).
Microsoft does not reveal the editorial sources behind Word’s spelling dictionary. In the distant past, Microsoft licensed a third-party dictionary. But in recent years dictionary maintenance has been brought in-house, presumably as a cost-cutting exercise.
Microsoft Editor is a different technology to the spell-checker and appears to use different dictionary sources. Copilot AI is also separate from the core Office dictionary. That’s why you can get different spelling and grammar results from Word, Editor and Copilot for the same text.