A few days ago, I started to write something complaining about people who use “white supremacy” when they mean “white supremacism.” Supremacy, I was going to say, is the state of being supreme. Usually they mean the unfounded assertion of being supreme. People who make that claim are supremacists, so the claim should be called supremacism, right? Like “racist” and “racism.”

But my spelling checker complained about the word “supremacism,” so I checked to make sure. Neither Merriam-Webster nor dictionary.com recognizes it as a word, though both recognize “supremacist.” The OED recognizes the word, though, so it’s OK to use it east of the Atlantic.

If one word exists, shouldn’t the other? I’d start a campaign to get it listed in dictionaries, except that “campaigning for supremacism” doesn’t sound so good.