Sometimes, some words seem like they’re just gibberish, but over time, they become accepted as standard language. A good (albeit fictional) example of this is the book Frindle.

But sometimes, a word CAN start out as gibberish, and become forgotten because no one needs it, or it just isn’t catchy, or it can be a misunderstanding by reading an index card for an abbreviation, thinking it’s one word but isn’t, being corrected 13 years later, and remaining in obscurity until someone noted it.

You can probably guess where this is headed.

Dord was an error published in the New International Dictionary’s second edition (this error was made by the people who worked for a company known as the G. and C. Merriam Company, which went on to be known as none other than Merriam-Webster). The error was made when, in 1931, someone read an index card that said,

D or d, cont./density.

But someone misread it as Dord, and it was published in the dictionary mentioned above in circa 1934. If you saw that dictionary, flipped to page 771, and looked between the entries of Dorcopsis and doré, you’d find:

dord (dôrd), n. Physics & Chem. Density.

The word remained in each dictionary, even in 1939, when someone noticed dord lacked an etymology, and wrote a letter saying that there was an error. G. and C. Merriam Company/Merriam Webster noted the error and removed it throughout most of its dictionaries, and it was completely removed in 1947. 15 years after the error was caught, a man named Philip Babcock Gove wrote a letter explaining its introduction and correction.

This proves that you really need to read carefully on things like this! That, or just have better spacing.