Is "dispreferred" a mainstream word in English?
I just recently came across the word dispreferred in a linguistic document. I have never heard the word used before, rather I generally hear something like "preferred something else" in everyday conversation. Is dispreferred a linguistics/language specific term or does it have more widespread usage in non-technical conversations? As I type the word dispreferred, I see a red underline indicating that I have entered a misspelled word.
It's not in my Merriam-Webster or dictionary.reference.com, and I've never heard of it.
LanguageLog has some citations for it, but the article seems to confirm, if anything, that it's linguists' jargon.
'Mainstream', No. 'Word', Yes.
It's more of a domain-specific term defined in linguistics, although it does seem to appear in general English writing in a few instances. [Of course some people will love (or hate) the heightened suspense or the "gambling thrill," more of which is possible in the multistage lottery, and will prefer (or dis- prefer) it to a simple lottery.]a
It also seems to appear in linguistics literature in its general English sense apart from reference by its DSL-definition. [If "preferred'V'dispreferred" refer not to tastes/desires of the participants but to the sequential practices and ... And how do these different practices for preferred and dispreferred responses help us understand an important aggregate] [b]
See definition and some discussion on disprefer on Wiktionary:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/disprefer
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Talk:disprefer