Word of the year

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The word(s) of the year, sometimes capitalized as "Word(s) of the Year" and abbreviated "WOTY" (or "WotY"), refers to any of various assessments as to the most important word(s) or expression(s) in the public sphere during a specific year.

Contents

American Dialect Society [edit]

Since 1991, the American Dialect Society (ADS) has designated one or more words or terms to be the "Word of the Year" in the United States:

  • 2003: metrosexual[3]
  • 2004: red state, blue state, purple state (from the United States presidential election, 2004)[4]
  • 2005: truthiness (popularized on The Colbert Report)[5]
  • 2006: plutoed (demoted or devalued, as happened to the former planet Pluto)[6]
  • 2007: default (an adjective used to describe a risky or less than ideal loan, mortgage, or investment)[7]
  • 2008: bailout (in the specific sense of the rescue by the government of companies on the brink of failure, including large players in the banking industry)[8]
  • 2009: tweet (a short, timely message sent via the Twitter.com service, and verb, the act of sending such a message)[9]
  • 2010: app (an abbreviated form of application, a software program for a computer or phone operating system)[10]
  • 2011: occupy (verb or noun inspired from the Occupy movements of 2011)[11]
  • 2012: hashtag (a word or phrase preceded by a hash symbol (#), used on Twitter to mark a topic or make a commentary)[12]

The society also chose a "Word of the 1990s" (web), "Word of the 20th Century" (jazz), "Word of the Past Millennium" (she), and "Word of the Decade (2000-2009)" (google as a verb).

Selection [edit]

Other potential candidates for "Word of the Year" have included:

  • 2012: Other nominees were YOLO (an acronym for “You Only Live Once,” often used sarcastically or self-deprecatingly), fiscal cliff (the threat of spending cuts and tax increases looming over end-of-year budget negotiations), Gangnam style (the trendy style of Seoul’s Gangnam district, as used in the Korean pop song of the same name), marriage equality (legal recognition of same-sex marriage), and 47 percent (a claimed portion of the population that does not pay federal income tax).
  • 2011: 99%, 99 percenters and the acronym FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) lost in a run-off with occupy[13]
  • 2010: Nom lost in a run-off with app[14]
  • 2007: Among the contenders were green- (a designation of environmental concern, as in greenwashing), surge (an increase in troops in a war zone, as in the Iraq War troop surge of 2007), Facebook (all parts of speech), waterboarding (an interrogation technique in which the subject is immobilized and doused with water to simulate drowning), Googlegänger (a portmanteau of Google and Doppelgänger, meaning a person with your name who shows up when you google yourself), and wide stance, "to have a —" (to be hypocritical or to express two conflicting points of view, in reference to Senator Larry Craig after his 2007 arrest at an airport)[15]
  • 2006: Plutoed beat "climate canary" (something whose poor health indicates a looming environmental catastrophe) in a run-off vote for the 2006 word of the year. Other words in the running were flog (an advertisement disguised as a blog or web log), The Decider (a political catchphrase said by former United States President George W. Bush), "prohibited liquids" (fluids that cannot be transported by passengers on airplanes), and macaca (an American citizen treated as an alien)

Categories [edit]

In addition to the "Word of the Year", the society also selects words in other categories that vary from year to year:

Most Useful [edit]

  • 2012: -(po)calypse, -(ma)geddon (hyperbolic combining forms for various catastrophes)
  • 2011: humblebrag (expression of false humility, especially by celebrities on Twitter)
  • 2010: nom (onomatopoetic form connoting eating, esp. pleasurably)
  • 2009: fail (noun or interjection used when something is egregiously unsuccessful)
  • 2008: Barack Obama (specifically, the use of both names as combining forms, such as ObamaMania or Obamacare)

Most Creative [edit]

  • 2012: gate lice (airline passengers who crowd around a gate, waiting to board)
  • 2011: Mellencamp (a woman who has aged out of being a “cougar”, named after John Cougar Mellencamp)
  • 2010: prehab (preemptive enrollment in a rehab facility to prevent relapse of an abuse problem)
  • 2009: Dracula sneeze (covering one’s mouth with the crook of one’s elbow when sneezing, seen as similar to popular portrayals of the vampire Dracula, in which he hides the lower half of his face with a cape)
  • 2008: recombobulation area (an area at General Mitchell International Airport in which passengers that have passed through security screening can get their clothes and belongings back in order)

Most Unnecessary [edit]

  • 2012: legitimate rape (type of rape that Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin claimed rarely results in pregnancy)
  • 2011: bi-winning (term used by Charlie Sheen to describe himself pridefully, dismissing accusations of being bipolar)
  • 2010: refudiate (blend of refute and repudiate used by Sarah Palin on Twitter)
  • 2009: sea kittens (attempted rebranding of fish by PETA)
  • 2008: moofing (a PR firm-created term for working on the go with a laptop and cell phone)

Most Outrageous [edit]

  • 2012: legitimate rape (type of rape that Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin claimed rarely results in pregnancy)
  • 2011: assholocracy (rule by obnoxious multi-millionaires)
  • 2010: gate rape (pejorative term for invasive new airport pat-down procedure)
  • 2009: death panel (a supposed committee of doctors and/or bureaucrats who would decide which patients would and wouldn't receive treatment)
  • 2008: terrorist fist jab (a phrase for a fist bump coined by Fox News newscaster E. D. Hill)

Most Euphemistic [edit]

  • 2012: self-deportation (policy of encouraging illegal immigrants to return voluntarily to their home countries)
  • 2011: job creator (a person responsible for economic growth and employment)
  • 2010: kinetic event (Pentagon term for violent attacks on troops in Afghanistan)
  • 2009: hike the Appalachian trail (to go away to have sex with one’s illicit lover, from a statement released by South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford to cover for visiting his Argentinean mistress)
  • 2008: scooping technician (a person whose job it is to pick up dog poop)

Most Likely to Succeed [edit]

  • 2012: marriage equality (legal recognition of same-sex marriage)
  • 2011: cloud (online space for the large-scale processing and storage of data)
  • 2010: trend (verb for exhibiting a burst of online buzz)
  • 2009: twenty-ten (pronunciation of the year 2010, as opposed to saying “two thousand ten” or “two thousand and ten”)
  • 2008: shovel-ready (description of infrastructure projects that can be started quickly, when funds become available)

Least Likely to Succeed [edit]

Special Categories [edit]

  • Election Words (2012): binders (full of women) (a term used by Mitt Romney in the second presidential debate to describe the resumes of female job candidates that he consulted as governor of Massachusetts)
  • Occupy Words (2011): the 99%, 99 percenters (those held to be at a financial or political disadvantage to the top moneymakers, the one-percenters)
  • Fan Words (2010): gleek (a fan of the TV show Glee)
  • Election-Related Word (2008): maverick (a person who is beholden to no one, widely used by the Republican presidential and vice-presidential candidates John McCain and Sarah Palin)

Global Language Monitor [edit]

Since 2000, the Global Language Monitor (GLM) has been selecting the Top Ten Words, Phrases and Names of the Year.[16] To select these words and phrases, it uses a claimed statistical analysis of language usage in the worldwide print and electronic media, the Internet, and the blogosphere, as well as social media, though several linguists and lexicographers have charged that its mathematical methodologies are flawed.

Words [edit]

2012 2011 2010 2009
Apocalypse/Armageddon occupy Spillcam twitter
deficit fracking Vuvuzela Obama-
Olympiad drone The Narrative H1N1
Bak'tun Non-veg Refudiate stimulus
meme Kummerspeck Guido and Guidette vampire
MOOC Haboob Deficit 2.0
The Cloud 3Q Snowmagedden/Snowpocalypse deficit
omnishambles Trustafarians 3-D hadron
Frankenstorm (The Other) 99 Shellacking healthcare
obesogenic simplexity transparency
hen outrage
derecho bonus
hashtag unemployed
drones foreclosure
fracking cartel
phobes Twenty-ten
(spoken only)
superfood Obamacare
The 47
YOLO
adorkable

Phrases [edit]

2012 2011 2010 2009
Gangnam Style Arab Spring Anger and Rage King of Pop
Global warming/climate change Royal Wedding Climate change Obamamania
Fiscal cliff Anger and rage The Great Recession Climate change
The Deficit Climate change Teachable moment swine flu
God particle The Great Recession Tea Party Too Large to Fail
Rogue nukes Tahrir Square Ambush Marketing cloud computing
Near-Earth Asteroid Linear no-threshold Lady Gaga public option
Binders full of women Bunga bunga Man up Jai Ho!
Arab Spring ‘How’s that working out for you?’ Pass the bill to be able to see what’s in it Mayan calendar
solar max “Make no mistake about it!” Obamamania God particle
big data Don’t Touch My Junk
ethical/sustainable fashion
toxic politics
Citius, Altius, Fortius
War on Women

Names [edit]

2012 2011
Newtown and Malala Yousafzai
(tie)		 Steve Jobs
Xi Jinping Osama bin-Laden & Seal Team 6
Kate Middleton Fukushima
President Obama Mohamed Bouazizi
Mitt Romney Hu Jintao
London Olympics Kate Middleton
Higgs boson Muammar Gaddafi
Europe
(EU/Eurogeddon)		 Barack Obama
Felix Baumgartner PIIGS
Senkaku Islands Yaroslavl Lokomotiv
John Roberts
Bibi
(Benjamin Netanyahu)
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Christopher Stevens
Angela Merkel

2000-2009 decade words and phrases [edit]

Words:[17]

  1. global warming (2000), rated highly from day one of the decade
  2. 9/11 (2001), for the September 11 attacks
  3. Obama- (2008), the U.S. President's name as a root word or word stem
  4. bailout (2008), The Bank Bailout was but Act One of the crisis
  5. evacuee/refugee (2005), After Katrina, refugees became evacuees
  6. derivative (2007), financial instrument or analytical tool that engendered the Meltdown
  7. google (2007), from Google Search, after word 'googol'
  8. surge (2007), the strategy that effectively ended the Iraq War
  9. Chinglish (2005), Chinese-English hybrid language growing larger as Chinese influence expands
  10. tsunami (2004), from Southeast Asian Tsunami which took 250,000 lives
  11. H1N1 (2009), a strain of the Swine Flu
  12. default (2007), subprime mortgages linked to financial troubles
  13. dot.com (2000), the dot.com bubble of computer layoffs, before ecommerce regrew
  14. Y2K (2000), from the Y2K bug of computers mishandling dates after 1999
  15. misunderestimate (2002), a term from George W. Bush
  16. chad (2000), paper chips from voter punched cards in the 2000 Florida election recount
  17. twitter (2008), with a quarter of a billion references on Google
  18. WMD (2002), Iraq’s supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction
  19. blog (2003), first called "weblog" which contracted into "blog"
  20. texting (2004), sending text messages (not voice recordings) over cell phones
  21. slumdog (2008), child inhabitants of Mumbai's slums
  22. sustainable (2006), key to "Green" living where natural resources are never depleted
  23. Brokeback (2004), new term for 'gay' from the Hollywood film Brokeback Mountain
  24. quagmire (2004), as would the Iraq War end up like Vietnam, another "quagmire"?
  25. truthiness (2006), Stephen Colbert's word for truth based on intuition not evidence or reason

Also worth noting: 'embedded' (2003), to embed reporters with US troops.

Phrases:

  1. climate change (2000), Green words in every form dominate the decade
  2. Financial Tsunami (2008), one-quarter of the world’s wealth vanishes seemingly overnight
  3. ground zero (2001), site of 9/11 terrorist attack in New York City
  4. War on Terror (2001), G.W. Bush administration’s response to 9/11
  5. Weapons of Mass Destruction (2003), Bush’s WMD never found in Iraq or the Syrian desert
  6. swine flu (2008), specifically the H1N1 strain of flu virus
  7. "Let’s Roll!" (2001), Todd Beamer's last words heard before Flight 93 crashed into the PA countryside
  8. Red State/Blue State (2004), Republican (red) or Democratic (blue) control of U.S. states
  9. carbon footprint (2007), the amount of CO2 an activity produces
  10. shock-and-awe (2003), initial strategy of Iraq War to terrorize Iraqi forces
  11. Ponzi scheme (2009), when Madoff's rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul strategy reaped billions & heartache
  12. Category 4 (2005), for Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Rita, Hurricane Wilma
  13. King of Pop (2000), Elvis was the King, MJ the King (of Pop)
  14. "Stay the course" (2004), George W. Bush's off-stated guidance for Iraq War
  15. "Yes, we can!" (2008), Obama’s winning campaign slogan
  16. "Jai Ho!" (2008), shout of joy (and song) from film Slumdog Millionaire
  17. "Out of the Mainstream" (2003), complaint about any opposition’s political platform
  18. cloud computing (2007), using the Internet (or other network) as a large computational device
  19. threat fatigue (2004), one too many terrorist threat alerts
  20. same-sex marriage (2003), marriage of gay or lesbian couples

Similar word lists [edit]

A Word a Year [edit]

Since 2004, Susie Dent, an English lexicographer has published a column, "A Word a Year", in which she chooses a single word from each of the last 101 years to represent preoccupations of the time. Susie Dent notes that the list is subjective.[18][19][20] Each year, she gives a completely different set of words.

Since Susie Dent works for the Oxford University Press, her words of choice are often incorrectly referred to as "Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year".

German Wort des Jahres [edit]

Main articles: Word of the year (Germany) and Un-word of the year (Germany)

In Germany, a Wort des Jahres has been selected since 1972 by the Society of the German Language.[21] In addition, an Unwort des Jahres (Unword of the Year or No-no Word of the Year) has been nominated since 1991, for a word or phrase in public speech deemed insulting or socially inappropriate (such as "Überfremdung").[22]

See also [edit]

Further reading [edit]

  • John Ayto, "A Century of New Words", Series: Oxford Paperback Reference (2007) ISBN 0-19-921369-0
  • John Ayto, "Twentieth Century Words

References [edit]

  1. ^ "American Dialect Society". Americandialect.org. 2002-01-13. Retrieved 2012-11-13. 
  2. ^ "American Dialect Society". Americandialect.org. 2003-01-13. Retrieved 2012-11-13. 
  3. ^ "American Dialect Society". Americandialect.org. 2004-01-13. Retrieved 2012-11-13. 
  4. ^ "American Dialect Society". Americandialect.org. 2005-01-07. Retrieved 2012-11-13. 
  5. ^ American Dialect Society
  6. ^ "American Dialect Society". Americandialect.org. 2007-01-05. Retrieved 2012-11-13. 
  7. ^ "American Dialect Society". Americandialect.org. 2008-01-04. Retrieved 2012-11-13. 
  8. ^ "American Dialect Society". Americandialect.org. 2009-01-09. Retrieved 2012-11-13. 
  9. ^ "American Dialect Society". Americandialect.org. 2010-01-08. Retrieved 2012-11-13. 
  10. ^ "American Dialect Society". Americandialect.org. 2011-01-08. Retrieved 2012-11-13. 
  11. ^ "American Dialect Society". Americandialect.org. 2012-01-06. Retrieved 2012-11-13. 
  12. ^ "American Dialect Society". Americandialect.org. 2013-01-04. Retrieved 2013-01-05. 
  13. ^ http://www.americandialect.org/2011-Word-of-the-Year-PRESS-RELEASE.pdf
  14. ^ http://www.americandialect.org/American-Dialect-Society-2010-Word-of-the-Year-PRESS-RELEASE.pdf
  15. ^ http://www.americandialect.org/Word-of-the-Year_2007.pdf
  16. ^ [1] Top Words of the Decade
  17. ^ Top Words Of The Decade 2000-2009: Most Popular Words
  18. ^ A Word a Year: 1906-2006
  19. ^ A Word a Year: 1905-2005
  20. ^ A Word a Year: 1904-2004
  21. ^ German Word of the Year
  22. ^ "Unword of the year" in Germany

External links [edit]

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