The Strange Path of the Word "Subbookkeeper"

I accounted for it without an assistant.

In “The Lost Word” (Word Ways #4.3, 1971), Ralph G. Beaman bemoans the 1961 deletion of the word subbookkeeper from Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. The word is beloved by word lovers because it includes four double letters in a row.

I thought there was a good chance that some modern dictionary had a listing for it, and indeed there was one and only one…

Urban Dictionary??

Well, well, the things we find. I’ve criticized Urban Dictionary for its widespread inaccuracies and joke entries mixed irresponsibly with its serious and half-serious content. But maybe I should revise my opinion of the site upward if it’s the main keeper of information about this word. Here’s its first entry…

Oh, and here’s its second entry, which combines an inability to count with a seeming irreverence for language in general (“Bookkeeper isn’t a word”). Nope, sorry, Urban Dictionary is still terrible. The amount of downvotes the second entry has attracted only underscores the point: this is a site committed to engagement over accuracy, and if that’s your value system, you can’t be a true dictionary.

But is UD really the only source left?

Trying to find a news article with the term leads to these three entries, but none of them actually contain the word subbookkeeper (or the related subbookkeeping, which would also include the four consecutive double letters). Instead, they’re all about subaccountancy. An accountant might consider that close enough, but a word lover wouldn’t.

Most online references to subbookkeeper reference either Urban Dictionary or its special status among word lovers. Definition-of.com has an entry here, and Definition-of.com is associated with The Free Dictionary, a respected online resource. Its definition is original, not a mere copy of another source. But still: Urban Dictionary and Definition-of.com are not exactly Webster’s and the OED.

The word was never that popular. Google Ngrams refuses to cite any uses of it, implying its usage is so infrequent as to be beyond measure. Even looking through books, one only finds an occasional reference to it as a position, mostly in obituaries going back as far as colonial days. It doesn’t seem like the kind of job too many people would brag about having while they were alive.

The word does have one thing going for it: if you know anything about accounting, then the meaning of subbookkeeper is intuitive, whereas a lot of odd words take some explaining to be understandable. Even so, it may be an outmoded concept: even if you’re not the head of an accounting team, you’re considered an accountant on the team.

So I’d use caution when deploying this example in discussions of “word records.” Someone might ask you to cite your sources.

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An overdue correction: last week, I said that Harvey and Doug Beeferman’s Datamuse bought OneLook and RhymeZone and made them into what they are today: while OneLook was such a purchase, RhymeZone was Doug’s creation. I might have more to say about this one later!

Tomorrow and the next day: Who is the first comic-book hero ever? The six answers may surprise you.