My favorite response to “that’s not a word” is “then why do you know what it means?”
Every time someone within 30 miles of me says “that’s a made up word” I am uncontrollably compelled to respond “ALL WORDS ARE MADE UP!”
In a college language class I took, we talked about the Jabberwocky poem and the professor had us try to explain every word in it. When we got to ‘outgrabe’ she asked why it was past tense and my response was “Cause the present tense is outgribe”. Her response was “That doesn’t answer the question but that brings up a better one. Why do you know that?”
