Believe it or not, these are real words
What makes a word a “real word?” It’s not as cut and dry as you’d imagine. New words are made up all the time, and as long as they gain traction and have distinct meaning, we consider them “real words.”
For example, take the word televise. It’s a newer word created from television (which had to be created first in order to televise anything). This is called a back formation. Like televise, many backtracked words are successful, but others (gruntled) fail to secure common-language real estate. So, to honor those words that haven’t stuck around in our day-to-day speech, we present you with our favorite unpopular back formations.