RANKing Words?

The Excel function RANK allows one to automatically rank a number within a given range of numbers. Can anyone think of a way to do the same thing with words?

For example, imagine a list of 20 words in a column, with space to add ten more words (complete range B2 to B31, which include the last ten blank cells). If these were numbers, then in the previous column one could simply put in the RANK formula covering the full range, which would then auto update as you added more numbers to the spare ten cells of the range. Assuming that all the values being ranked are unique, and you would therefore get a unique rank number, to order them in rank order, one would simply have the list of possible rank values a column or two removed and VLOOKUP the ranks and their appropriate values.

But what if these numbers were WORDS? The first 20 words are FIXED and will not change, the next ten cells of the range could have any other words typed into them. There is no RANK function for words so how would you suggest that ranking by words is achieved, that does not require any intervention, and as new words were added to the spare ten cells in the range, then the rank would automatically update? This list of ranked words would then be VLOOKUP’d in the same fashion as above with the final list being used to fuel a drop down box, so the user would have an alphabetical listing of all the potential words in the range.