At the beginning of this semester, the students in my Linguistics writing class and I were instructed to help compile a "Cornell" dictionary. Each student was to find 12 words distinct to the Cornell area. As long as the words were "Cornellian," any other criteria were left open. Therefore, which words were "Cornellian" and which were not was left to interpretation by each compiler. Each student went about his or her merry way and did the assignment. Now that it is the end of the year, I have gone through all the words and put each word into categories. These categories focus on just how "Cornellian" each word is and why each compiler would have chosen that word.

The first category of words are the "Cornellian" words that didn't result from abbreviation. These words are the heart of the dictionary because it is precisely what the assignment was asking for. Words in this first category have changed meaning simply because of their use at Cornell. Their meaning has completely changed because of how Cornell inhabitants have used them. An example of a perfect "Cornellian" word would be "Ithicating." "Ithicating" is used to describe the weather here around Cornell. Ithaca has very strange weather. It's weather can change in a second, that is if you can tell what the weather is. When the weather is really strange and difficult to distinguish, it is Ithicating. This word originated completely because of Cornell and the surrounding Ithaca region. Nowhere else in the United States could the word "Ithicating" have originated. Other words that would go into this category are words that have been created as names. Apparently students just thought that the current names that certain things had just weren't adequate. "Parking Nazi" would be a great example of this word because it shows how things get their new names. "Parking Nazi" is simple a meter maid. That is, someone who goes through the parking lots and checks for parking permits. The name for these types of people are very unclear and rather vague to begin with, so being the creative and resourceful students we Cornellians are, we assigned the person a new name. With the name, was obviously mixed some bitterness about receiving parking tickets. Again, this is word that exists purely because of Cornell. Other categories also have these "Cornellian" words. I have categorized them differently simply because of the form of the word.

A second category I have used contains abbreviations, acronyms, and shortened words. This category has mainly "Cornellian" words. However, it contains certain words that are purely shortened names. Personally, I do not consider these shorted names to be "Cornellian" because these words originated in the mind of some administrator who needed a title for something. True "Cornellian" words originate with the student and the meaning develops from there. A very "Cornellian" word that has come about due to shortening of another word would be "hotelie." This word has arisen from the major hotel administration. Students needed a name for these people, so they are now called hotelies. Many shortened words for majors exist at Cornell, but only few are unique to Cornell. From another point of view, an abbreviation like TCAT did originate due to Cornell and the surrounding region. But again, this is a name and not a word. It did no develop through the evolution of language. Somebody simply needed a name for a bus transit system, so they came up with TCAT. Whoever submitted TCAT must have thought that it was Cornellian because it only exists at Cornell. That fine considering that each person has a different definition of Cornellian.

Another category of words in our dictionary is composed of words that are not "Cornellian." One must keep in mind that is an assignment fulfilled by students. The only criteria for what kind of words that were supposed to be submitted was left to interpretation. As result, students were basically able to submit almost any kind of word they wanted to. In class, we discussed to what extent this should be allowed. Many of the words are simply adjectives to describe certain situations. These words did not originate from Cornell. They are taken from other places in the nation. Cornell is an extremely diverse mix of people which means that it is also an extremely diverse mix of language. The people that submitted these non-"Cornellian" words obviously submitted these words because they heard these words for the first time. To them, the word was Cornellian. However, the word did not originate at Cornell. My definition of "Cornellian" will obviously differ from the definition of others. Despite this, I know for a fact that everyone in the class knows that words like "phat," "sketchy," and "shady" are not Cornellian. I can only guess as to why they submitted these non-Cornellian words even though they weren't particularly appropriate for our dictionary.

In conclusion, it can be seen through the classification that these "Cornellian" words are very difficult to find. Two of the longest categories I had were names and non-"Cornellian" words. The truly pure "Cornellian" words, according to my classification were the most scarce. One of the longest lists was the category of names. All of these words can either be seen or not be seen as "Cornellian" they lie on the border. They are also the easiest to obtain because they require the least thinking. Compilers will select the words that are the easiest to obtain and the words that meet the assignment requirements. If only purely Cornellians words are wanted a definitive criteria must be given. However, this would limit the number of the words in the dictionary.