I play a lot of scrabble, and words with friends and often jump over to Etymonline to see the meaning or derivation of a word, only to find out that it isn’t here on Etymonline. I think it could be a significant improvement to Etymonline if you created a “Suggest a Word” option on Etymonline thus allowing for more user input toward building this dictionary. Obviously each word suggested needs to be checked and approved by the Admins/Creators. I mainly use Etymonline ‘on-the-go’ via the mobile app. Does this option already exist on the website? Thanks very much for your consideration!
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Currently neither the website nor the app has such feature.
That’s good advice. Thank you very much.
I think maybe we need to combine this feature with the search function of some sort, so that only when a word cannot be found, the user is prompted to submit a request to the editor.
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I second the motion, and just so that when the feature is born, it should not be barren; here is the first entry: pareidolia
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I think this could even be completely integrated into search. No need for an extra “suggest a word” step. The act of searching for a word is already a suggestion!
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Problem with that is when people misspell words, creates a huge database that has to be routinely cleared out
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I don’t think it would have to be cleared out. Misspelled words would be lower frequency and could be ignored without burden. Basically, the search feature presents a stream of “expectations” for the site. What is done with this stream is entirely up to technical preference.
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Irregardless: I have been considering what the true meaning of the term irregardless might be throughout history. There are many conflicting perspectives but I have yet read anything that correlates to a form of etymology of ir- as to mean “upon” rather than “not” in a possible proper context which could benefit the belief of the terms use with increased emphasis. This would make the term no longer erroneous. Just to reference a relationship to another word: if we look at “illuminate” we can see that there is definately similarities to the prefix used to emphasize the entire term. Afyer all, il- and ir- both mean not, and both mean upon in their respective uses and applications.
I don’t think ir- being negative causes any problems. Could just be a situation where the two negative roots intensify each other instead of canceling. Not that common in English but not unheard of.