On February 28th, 1939 a dictionary editor for the Merriam-Webster dictionary noticed that under the word ‘Dord’ defined as ‘a synonym for density’, there was no etymology, leaving him wondering why. This discovery sent him on an investigation and before long an order was sent to the printers to make an urgent change to the dictionary.
You see, the word Dord doesn’t exist but it did appear in the Merriam-Webster dictionary between 1934 and 1947 and the story of how it got there is an interesting one.
On July 31st, 1931, Austin M. Patterson, Webster’s chemistry editor, sent in a note reading “D or d, cont./density.” To mean that density should be added to a list of existing words that the letter D can abbreviate. The slip went astray and a new slip was prepared for the printer, but on this the phrase “D or d” was misinterpreted as a single word: Dord.
The word was not picked up or corrected by proofreaders and so it appeared on page 771 of the New International Dictionary, second edition in 1934, appearing between ‘Dorcopsis (a small kangeroo), and ‘Dore’ (golden in colour).
Eventually the dictionary would be corrected and by 1947, all trace of ‘Dord’ had vanished, much to the sadness of editor Philip Gove who when explaining the error to ‘American Speech’ was loathe to let it go, explaining “It’s probably too bad,” he wrote, “for why shouldn’t “dord” mean density?”
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