Hi! Hang on to your bong, because this is gonna be a real bummer.
Yes, we can in fact simply make stuff up. That is *literally how language works.* Language is a locomotive: this blazing fast, high energy, non-stop,
barely on the rails train, that is *constantly* barreling into new territory, picking up all kinds of detritus along the way and just getting more and more wild as it goes.
Dictionaries are
field guides. They neither prescribe nor proscribe the usage of words: they
document how words are used. Take a trip into the woods and find a bird you don't recognize? Consult the bird field guide. Check out it's colors, it's plumage. Here's what that bird is. See a word you don't recognize? Check out the word field guide. It'll tell you what it thinks that word is.
But times change. We find new birds and we find new words. And eventually, most of them make it into the field guide.
Remember when we all got bummed about about "LOL" being put in the dictionary?
Click me and ****ing despair.
An excerpt from that article to illustrate my point:
View attachment 314753
So yes, the institutional dictionary has yet to formally recognize it, but my dude it is *coming.*
Yes, said student is still required to write his/her work up using the currently acceptable mode. But that mode has changed, has always changed, and will always continue to change. And any student who feels they need to *cling* to that mode, because they otherwise would have got a bad grade in college, missed the entire point of emergent language.