After updating the dictionary used by my booggle app, I noticed several words had been removed. One of them was rhinoceroi.
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines a dictionary as
A book which explains or translates, usually in alphabetical order, the words of a language or languages (or of a particular category of vocabulary), giving for each word its typical spelling, an explanation of its meaning or meanings, and often other information, such as pronunciation, etymology, synonyms, equivalents in other languages, and illustrative examples. Also (from the late 20th cent.): an electronic resource performing this function.
But languages evolve and the words and meanings change. So who decides what a dictionary includes at any given point in time?
If you're playing a casual game of scrabble. You might reach for the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (OSPD) published by Merriam-Webster.
In a tournament setting, you'll probably use either the NASPA Word List (NWL) or Collins Scrabble Words (CSW) depending on what country you live in.
Yeah, so I recently updated from NWL2020 (the second edition) to NWL2023 (the third edition) for my app. That change got rid of several words, including rhinoceroi.
In the NWL2023 Draft Report (pdf), they noted:
“rhinocerotes” is the newly added correct Greek plural, “rhinoceroi”* was erroneously added to Wiktionary in 2006 and subsequently added to dictionary.com
If you go to dictionary.com, rhinoceroi happily gives you a "No results found" message. But it is still live at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rhinoceroi and we can see its history.
In June 2006, the user Doremítzwr added the rhinoceroi definition as an "Etymologically correct plural of rhinoceros".
This was controversial and spawned a spirited discussion in the Tea Room on what words should and should not be included in the dictionary.
By July another user had marked it as hypercorrect. This was to inform readers that while this was an attempt to follow the rules of language and be more correct, the word is instead usually considered incorrect.
The list of hypercorrections on wiktionary has additional plurals added by Doremítzwr (like avocadi, agendae, scenarii, and platypi).
In Jan 2007, the spirited discussion continued with Labelling plurals as “irregular” and/or “nonstandard”: important points from a discussion concerning the case study “scenarii”
While that internet debate may or may not be worth your time to read, I like EncycloPetey's point at the end that:
What English could use is outside the scope of Wiktionary. Our goal is to describe what English does.