I’m a compulsive Merriam-Webster entry looker-upper.
Ensuring consistency and being aware of industry standards are vital parts of my job (and you can’t trust MS Word’s spell check). I even look up entries to words I think I already know. Because you never know…
Earlier this year, after looking it up in M-W, I learned that they listed “chain saw” as an open compound (a word split in two by a space). This surprised me at the time.
Fast forward to the manuscript I’m editing now. “Chainsaw” pops up. I note to my client that M-W prefers the open compound but we can choose to ignore it as long as we’re consistent, and continue my editing.
On my next pass of the manuscript, I decide to look it up (because that’s what I do), and lo and behold…
Two entries: “chainsaw”
variants: or less commonly “chain saw”
I don’t think I’m crazy. This was not M-W’s entry earlier this year. I truly believe it’s been recently updated. I blame Chainsaw Man.
Chainsaw Man is a manga/anime that’s popular right now. I see ads for the movie; I see merchandise in stores and online. It’s everywhere, and my brain can’t help but make a connection to this Japanese series taking off and the fact that M-W has seemingly changed their entry.
This is by no means a rare occurrence. M-W is always adding words to their dictionary, and wordsmiths will tell you that word stylings are fluid, not fixed. Our lexicon is always changing, and compounds that were once open (“chain saw”) have a tendency to become closed (“chainsaw”) over time. I believe I discovered a fresh change, and it’s these kinds of things that make me happy I check.
If you need an editor who will exhaustively check almost every word in your manuscript, I’d love to chat.
Timothy