Family Life

Genius 6-year-old campaigns to add word he invented to dictionaries

Kids can often come up with their own new words, but how often are they put in the Oxford dictoinary? 

Levi Budd from Victoria, Canada, is just 6 -years-old, and has already invented his own word. While sitting in the back of the car one day, he asked his mother "What do we call a word that spells another word backwards?” 

Surprisingly, there was no pre-existing word in the English language to describe this phenomenon which includes words such as stop/pots and god/dog.

A palindrome is a word that is spelt the same forwards as backwards, for example; mum, dad, racecar or kayak. So Levi put his own spin on the word to create a new one: levidrome. 

Levi's parents, Lucky and Jessy, took to Youtube to explain the new discovery, with the video amassing over 23,000 views in under a month: 

The clever kids word really received attention, however, when was picked up by celebrities, such as veteran actor William Shatner. 

Shatner tweeted Oxford Dictionaries detailing why levidrome should be an addition to the collection.

Oxford Dictionaries then released a video featuring an editor, Rebecca, who explained how a word such as "levidrome" get added to the dictionary. She said: 

"So Levi, there are many new words every year. Some very clever ones nad some very useful ones. We don't add all these words to our dictionary, we'd never sleep if we did. Instead, we only put in words that have been used by a lot of people for a very long time."

As levidrome has gathered so much attention by media outlets and online, Rebecca said: "that levidrome is well on it's way to becoming part of our dictionary." The amount of people using the word in such a short space of time, she,added, is "really impressive." 

If you're planning on gifting an Oxford English Dictionary for Christmas though, you won't see levidrome in it just yet. Adding a word to the dictionary also depends on a large group of people using it for a considerable amount of time:

"Next thing we need to see, is people using the word not just as part of your campaign, but whenever they're talking about a word that becomes another word when your read it backwards." Rebecca continues. "Then all we do is wait and hope that people keep using your word. In a year or so, if people are still using the word then it might well get into our dictionary." 

Schools all over Canada and North America have also been in touch with Levi to show if that they have been coming up with levidromes of their own. Popular sites such as Urban Dictionary have also picked up on the levidrome. 

Levidrome is definitely our word on the day, why not share it with your little ones and see what they come up with? 

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