Reflections by 19th Century authors on words which are no present in the language and in the dictionary

Abstract

This article presents, analyses and contextualises the reflections that authors –non-writers– of the 19th century made on lexical novelty. The opinions of scholars and intellectuals, both academic and non-academic, on the admission of new voices, lexical creations or loanwords serve to expose their linguistic ideas and to assess the role of the Royal Spanish Academy and its dictionary in the shaping of a language model. In particular, their opinions shed light on the interest shown regarding matters related to language, the lexicon and the fate of specific words.