Why has "soffit" been left out of the dictionary?

Even here, Yahoo spell check doesn't recognize the word soffit! Soffits have been a part of modern architecture for a century and yet it is not listed in most dictionaries or spell check programs - MS Word omits it. Only in just the last few years has it been included in a few on-line dictionaries. Find an old printed dictionary and soffit is not listed - and yet millions of houses have one!Why has "soffit" been left out of the dictionary?
Mmm, interesting. I have a 1982 Collins Concise Dictionary, and "soffit" is listed. My versions of Word and WordPerfect are both happy about it, as well.



I take your point about Y!A spell check, though.Why has "soffit" been left out of the dictionary?
It's been in the Oxford English Dictionary since at least 1973 (it's in my 1973 copy of the Shorter Oxford) and almost certainly much further back, since the word is documented to the 1600s.

But smaller mainstream dictionaries generally omit words that the compilers view as specialist terminology.