A word that doesn't exist and yet it does.

I’ll make it easy on you, this is the word: smalm

I was playing Wordle with my brother and dad the other day and my dad sent me a word he tried, but he was confused because autocomplete kept correcting it. He had never heard of it. Neither had I.

I looked in the dictionary for the word and I couldn’t find it. I did a web search and couldn’t find it. Then I checked in the unix word list to see if I could find it there.

I found it!

But then I still couldn’t find a definition.

I did eventually find a couple links to it on the web for scrabble word lists.

My guess is that like map makers, dictionary makes must create fake words as a sort of copyright mechanism to check if people are copying their work. And because word game makers can’t check every word to see if they’re real, they include a word from a common list of words.

Don’t believe me that it doesn’t exist?

References

Video talking about locations that don’t exist

DuckDuckGo search for smalm

Google search for smalm

P.S. both searches think I’ve mistyped smalm and meant small but in any case you still won’t find anything.