Dictionary editors such as Websters decide when a sound that people use to describe something officially?

becomes a word. But how do they decide if a word that was in a previous dictionary is no longer used often enough to be considered a word? Or do they ever decide this? Maybe once something is considered a word it will always have the status of being a word. For example "abseil." I've never heard anyone use that word. Is there any point to having a word that is only used in spelling bees?Dictionary editors such as Websters decide when a sound that people use to describe something officially?
Your assumption is a bit mistaken: dictionaries don't define whether a word counts as a word. A word exists if people use it.



Dictionaries - in general - make the decision to incluide/exclude a word on factors such as how long the word has been used, and how widely it's used. Dictionaries generally lag behind usage, because quite often words have a short fad and disappear, and some words never get into the dictionary: general-purpose dictionaries never include all of English, and exclude specialist words, such as scientific and medical.



Some dictionaries (the smaller ones) limit themselves to current English, so yes, they will drop words eventually. Others - notably the Oxford English Dictionary - are historical dictionaries, and get larger and larger as they keep all words documented.



"abseil." I've never heard anyone use that word"



Maybe you live somewhere very flat where they never do it?Dictionary editors such as Websters decide when a sound that people use to describe something officially?
They are constantly checking. When a word stops appearing in print in reputable publications, they will drop it or label it "obsolete". You picked a bad example with "abseil", though. You have never heard it only because you don't do any climbing with ropes. There are people who use it every day.