Words: permie, n.

HOW LONG does it take for a word to receive official recognition? For some time, those hired on a short-term contract to augment full-time workers in an office have been in the habit of referring to these manacled and invariably lower-paid colleagues as "permies".

It is in particular usage among those called in at increasingly high rates to avert disasters with computer systems come the year 2000.

As such, it now figures in an entertaining first novel, Stickleback, by John McCabe, whose plot goes wonky towards the end. His ears are closer to the ground than that of the compilers of that recent, avowedly vulgar new Oxford dictionary.

Will its rivals rush to fill this gap?