I doubt they would, Shakespeare wrote 300+ years ago in Elizabethan English, whereas the Victorian era was mere 110 years ago. Most people find the language of Dickens, Thackeray, Georg Eliot, the Bronte sisters and Lewis Carroll much easier going than Shakespeare.

That said, Tempscire may well be correct, Victorians might be shocked to find that we don’t all write like Macaulay, but nor did they write like Bacon, Spenser, Marlow or indeed Shakespeare.

These are the best online definitions of “word” I can find, they are from the online Macquarie Dictionary (Australia), interestingly the online Websters & Oxford dictionaries only list the first one

1. a sound or a combination of sounds, or its written or printed representation, used in any language as the sign of a concept.

2. a grammatical element which can stand alone as an utterance, not divisible into two or more parts; thus boy and boyish, but not -ish or boy scout, the former being less than a word, the latter more.

It seems to me that the first would allow for two or more elements as in Carbon Neutral, whilst the second would certainly not. Even tho’ I’m an Australian I’d say that the second definition would be closer to most peoples understanding of what a “word” actually is.

Things like Web 2.0, Slow Food, Clown Computing etc might be said to be “labels” as in – a short word or phrase of description for a person, group, movement, idea etc.

The main problem with the list is that none of those terms have been added to the language in the last couple days. The newest are probably “greenwash” or “sexting” and they’ve even been around for about 6 months. “Web 2.0″ has been part of the language for about 4 years, and “n00b” may be entering it’s second decade.

The actual 1,000,000th word will probably not enter common usage for 3 months to a year (if it even enters common usage).

ha ha

Another exammple is the French word “frileux”, well known by our lady friends, which means ‘subjective to the cold’. No English word for that! So…
Neatorama-ers, let’s create the 1,000,001st word! What would be “frileux” in English?

In general I agree with you. English is full of words made up and borrowed from other languages. Mostly borrowed from many languages. My main issue was that most of these are phrases. The smaller point was the “jai ho” one, as that is not a very common phrase (at least I’ve never heard it before, granted that’s really not saying much). For a borrowed word to be considered english I think it should have to be significantly more common. Perhaps it’s well on it’s way to becoming english but I don’t think it is there yet. But that is merely my opinion and things like this are heavily subject to opinions when it comes to them being “right” or “correct”. Pinning it down definitively is hard to do.

In general…I’m torn. My first impulse is to call this a stupid list full of stupid non-words, most of which will be forgotten within the decade.

On the other hand, there’s no “natural law” governing language or what can be considered proper words. If we collectively decide “n00b” actually counts as a “real” word, numbers and all, then it is. “Okay”/”OK” would not, at this point in time, be contested as a word, nor would “puking,” “eyeball,” or any other Shakespeare-invented word. I’m sure a Victorian would be stunned at the claptrap we utter compared to his more formal style and vocabulary that we no longer use.

Calling Alex retarded is a bit inflammatory. (It’s just a list of “words”.)