Dord facts for kids

Dord is a ghost word, a word that has no definition. In 1934, the New International Merriam Webster Dictionary accidentally printed the word, dord. Philip Babcock Gove was an editor at Merriam-Webster and became editor-in-chief of Webster's Third New International Dictionary. Gove wrote a letter to the journal American Speech fifteen years after the error was caught. He explained why "dord" was printed in the second edition of the New International dictionary. It got through when a slip was sent saying D or d? Readers could think it was a word, dord. It only appeared in the second edition of the dictionary. It was soon caught and taken out. Dord is the only known ghost word in the Merriam Webster's Dictionary history.