Six-year-old Levi Budd is one step closer to making his dream of adding a new word to the dictionary a reality.
Oxford Dictionary has responded to Levi’s wish to get a word named after him into the official book.
“Levidrome is well on its way to being in our dictionary. After just five weeks that’s really impressive. The next thing we need to see is people using the word,” said a spokesperson for Oxford Dictionary in a video posted to YouTube.
Levi has always been obsessed with words like palindrome, which refers to words that are the same when read backwards, like racecar.
But one day Levi came across a problem. It all started when he saw a stop sign. Stop spells pots backwards so it isn’t a palindrome, but he wanted to know what it’s called when a word spells something else backwards.
Levi’s dad decided to find out by contacting Merriam-Webster to ask.
The dictionary company said no word currently existed. So Levi decided to change that, and started a campaign to create a new word: levidrome.
The campaign immediately took off, getting more that 10,000 views in one month after the family posted a video on YouTube.
Stars like William Shatner and Patricia Arquette have even tweeted their support for Levi.
But celebrities aren’t the only people excited about the new word.
“I’ve got schools in Ottawa, and schools in Toronto and Calgary and libraries all getting in touch with me with their boards of palindromes and levidromes. And that’s actually what it’s all about. It’s really exciting,” Lucky Budd, Levi’s dad, told The Canadian Press.
Levidrome has already been added to the Urban Dictionary and to the Merriam-Webster online open dictionary featuring user-submitted words.
Even if Levi’s goal to fill a hole in the English language isn’t met, his dad says it’s already a mission accomplished.
“We’re just trying to model if you have a good idea follow it, you got nothing to lose really,” said Budd.
Oxford Dictionary says it has a list of words it’s keeping an eye on and levidrome is on that list. If in a year people are still using levidrome it may be the next word they add.
With files from Neetu Garcha and The Canadian Press.