Word of the year

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.

American Dialect Society (U.S.)

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.

This is in addition to its "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). The society also selects words in other categories that vary from year to year, such as most original, most unnecessary, most outrageous and most likely to succeed.

A number of words chosen by the ADS are also on the lists of Merriam-Webster's Words of the Year and the Global Language Monitor.

• 1990: bushlips (similar to "bullshit" – stemming from President George H. W. Bush's 1988 "Read my lips: no new taxes" broken promise)
• 1991: mother of all (as in Saddam Hussein's foretold "Mother of all battles")
• 1992: Not! (meaning "just kidding")
• 1993: information superhighway
• 1994: cyber, morph (to change form)
• 1995: web and (to) newt (to act aggressively as a newcomer, like Speaker Newt Gingrich during the Contract with America)
• 1996: mom (as in "soccer mom")
• 1997: millennium bug
• 1998: e- (as in "e-mail" or "e-commerce")
• 1999: Y2K
• 2000: chad (from the 2000 presidential election controversy in Florida)
• 2001: 9-11

• 2002: weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
• 2003: metrosexual
• 2004: red state, blue state, purple state (from the United States presidential election, 2004)
• 2005: truthiness (popularized on The Colbert Report)
• 2006: plutoed (demoted or devalued, as happened to the former planet Pluto)
• 2007: subprime (an adjective used to describe a risky or less than ideal loan, mortgage, or investment)
• 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.)
• 2009: tweet (noun, a short, timely message sent via the Twitter.com service, and verb, the act of sending such a message)
• 2010: app (noun, an abbreviated form of application, a software program for a computer or phone operating system)
• 2011: occupy (verb or noun inspired from the Occupy movements of 2011)

• 2012: omnishambles. It beat 'Eurogeddon' & 'mummy porn'

2011 selections

After a run-off with FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and the 99%, 99 percenters, occupy was named the 2011 Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society.

• Most Useful: humblebrag - expression of false humility, especially by celebrities on Twitter.
• Most Creative: Mellencamp - a woman who has aged out of being a “cougar” (after John Cougar Mellencamp).
• Most Unnecessary: bi-winning - term used by Charlie Sheen to describe himself pridefully, dismissing accusations of being bipolar.
• Most Outrageous: assholocracy - rule by obnoxious multi-millionaires.
• Most Euphemistic: job creator - a member of the top one-percent of moneymakers.
• Most Likely to Succeed: cloud - online space for the large-scale processing and storage of data.
• Least Likely to Succeed: brony - adult male fan of the “My Little Pony” cartoon franchise.
• Occupy Words: the 99%, 99 percenters - those held to be at a financial or political disadvantage to the top moneymakers, the one-percenters. n-percenters, n-percent.

2010 selections

After a run-off with "nom," app was named the 2010 Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society.

• Most Useful: nom (Onomatopoetic form connoting eating, esp. pleasurably. Can be used as an interjection or noun to refer to delicious food.)
• Most Creative: prehab (Preemptive enrollment in a rehab facility to prevent relapse of an abuse problem.)
• Most Unnecessary: refudiate (Blend of refute and repudiate used by Sarah Palin on Twitter.)
• Most Outrageous: gate rape (Pejorative term for invasive new airport pat-down procedure.)
• Most Euphemistic: kinetic event (Pentagon term for violent attacks on troops in Afghanistan.)
• Most Likely to Succeed: trend (Verb: to exhibit a burst of online buzz.)
• Least Likely to Succeed: culturomics (Research project from Google analyzing the history of language and culture.)
• Fan Words: gleek (A fan of the TV show “Glee” [Glee + geek])

2009 selections

Along with tweet being named Word of the Year for 2009, the American Dialect Society named google (a generic form of "Google," meaning "to search the Internet") as its word of the decade.

• Most Useful: fail (A noun or interjection used when something is egregiously unsuccessful. Usually written as “FAIL!”)
• Most Creative: 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.)
• Most Unnecessary: sea kittens (fish [according to PETA])
• Most Outrageous: death panel (A supposed committee of doctors and/or bureaucrats who would decide which patients were allowed to receive treatment, ostensibly leaving the rest to die.)
• Most Euphemistic: hike the Appalachian trail (To go away to have sex with one’s illicit lover. Follows on a statement by South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, who went to Argentina to visit his mistress.)
• Most Likely to Succeed: twenty-ten (A pronunciation of the year 2010, as opposed to saying “two thousand ten” or “two thousand and ten.” [twenty- as prefix until 2099])
• Least Likely to Succeed: name of the decade 2000-2009, such as Naughties, Aughties, Oughties, etc.

2008 selections

The chair of the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society, Grant Barrett, said "When you vote for bailout, I guess you’re really voting for ‘hope’ and ‘change,’ too. Though you’d think a room full of pointy-headed intellectuals could come up with something more exciting.” In addition to the overall Word of the Year, the American Dialect Society named other top words of 2008

• Most Useful: Barack Obama (both names as combining forms)
• Most Creative: recombobulation area (An area at Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee in which passengers that have just passed through security screening can get their clothes and belongings back in order.)
• Most Unnecessary: moofing (From “mobile out of office,” meaning working on the go with a laptop and cell phone. Created by a PR firm.)
• Most Outrageous: terrorist fist jab (A knuckle-to-knuckle fist bump, or “dap,” traditionally performed between two black people as a sign of friendship, celebration or agreement. It was called the “terrorist fist jab” by the newscaster E. D. Hill, formerly of Fox News.)
• Most Euphemistic: scooping technician (A person whose job it is to pick up dog poop.)
• Most Likely to Succeed: shovel-ready (Used to describe infrastructure projects that can be started quickly, when funds become available.)
• Least Likely to Succeed: PUMA (An acronym for Party Unity My Ass, used by Democrats who were disaffected after Hillary Clinton failed to secure a sufficient number of delegates. It was later said to stand for People United Means Action.)
• Election-Related Word: maverick (A person who is beholden to no one. Widely used by the Republican Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates, John McCain and Sarah Palin. Also in the adjectival form mavericky, used by Tina Fey portraying Palin on Saturday Night Live.)

The Global Language Monitor on December 1 announced that change was its top word of 2008, followed by bailout and Obamamania. It noted that if it included 'obama-' as a root word or word stem, Obama- in its many forms (ObamaMania, Obamamentum, Obamanomics, Obamacize, Obamanation, etc.), would have overtaken both change, and bailout for the top spot. It also named financial tsunami as the top phrase, and Barack Obama as the top name.

New World Dictionary has announced its short list for 2008's Word of the Year and is inviting public opinion on the following final five contenders:

• leisure sickness (noun): a purported syndrome, not universally recognized by psychologists, by which some people (typically characterized as workaholics) are more likely to report feeling ill during weekends and vacations than when working
• overshare (verb): to divulge excessive personal information, as in a blog or broadcast interview, prompting reactions ranging from alarmed discomfort to approval
• cyberchondriac (noun): a hypochondriac who imagines that he or she has a particular disease based on medical information gleaned through the Internet
• selective ignorance (noun): the practice of selectively ignoring distracting, irrelevant, or otherwise unnecessary information received, such as through e-mail and news reports.
• youthanasia (noun): “ … the controversial practice of performing a battery of age-defying medical procedures to end lifeless skin and wrinkles; advocated by some as a last-resort measure to put the chronically youth-obsessed out of their misery … Think of it as mercy lifting.” —Armand Limnander, New York Times

Webster's New World Dictionary's final Word of the Year selection will be announced via streaming video by Editor-in-Chief Mike Agnes on December 1, 2008.

The New Oxford American Dictionary selected hypermiling, a term used in North America that refers to a set of techniques used to maximize fuel economy, as its Word of the Year for 2008.

2007 selection

"Subprime" was a popular choice for the 2007 word of the year and received over two-thirds of the votes cast. The meaning of "subprime" changed during the last quarter of the 20th century. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in 1976 a subprime loan was one with a below-prime interest rate; it wasn't until 1993 that "subprime" began referring to the rating of the borrower.

Other contenders were:

• green- "designates 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 person with your name who shows up when you google yourself" (portmanteau of Google and Doppelgänger)
• 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)

2006 selection

"Plutoed" beat "climate canary" in a run-off vote for the 2006 word of the year. A "climate canary" is something whose poor health indicates a looming environmental catastrophe.

"It was good that the society focused on a genuine scientific concern, though I believe the nomination came in from outer space," said committee chairman Professor Wayne Glowka.

Other words in the running for 2006 were:

• flog - "an advertisement disguised as a blog or web log"
• The Decider - a political catch phrase said by former United States President George W. Bush
• prohibited liquids - "fluids that cannot be transported by passengers on airplanes"
• macaca - "an American citizen treated as an alien"; "macaca" was also the Global Language Monitor's most politically incorrect word for 2006.

Global Language Monitor

Since 2000, the Global Language Monitor (GLM) has been selecting the Top Ten Words, Phrases and Names of the Year. To select these words and phrases it claims to use a statistical analysis of language usage in the worldwide print and electronic media, on the Internet and throughout the Blogosphere, including Social media, though several linguists and lexicographers have charged that its mathematical methodologies are flawed.

2011 selections

GLM announced its Top Words of the Year for 2011 on November 11, 2011. "'Occupy’ is the Top Word, ‘Arab Spring’ the Top Phrase and ‘Steve Jobs’ the Top Name of 2011 in its annual global survey of the English language. Occupy was followed by deficit, fracking, drone, and non-veg. Kummerspeck, haboob, 3Q, Trustafarians, and (the other) 99 rounded out the Top 10.

2010 words

1. Spillcam — The BP Spillcam instantly beamed the immensity of the Gulf Spill around the world to the dismay of environmentalists, BP’s PR staff and the President.
2. Vuvuzela — Brightly colored plastic horns that first came to prominence at the South African World Cup.
3. The Narrative – Though used at least since The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass in 1845, ‘The Narrative’ has recently been gaining traction in the political arena, virtually replacing the need for a party’s platform. (Cf. to ‘truthily’.)
4. Refudiate — Conflation of “refute” and “repudiate” (un)officially coined by Sarah Palin.
5. Guido and Guidette — Hey! All things Jersey are hot, capish? (Actually, capisci in standard Italian.)
6. Deficit – A growing and possibly intractable problem for the economies of most of the developed world.
7. Snowmagedden (and ‘Snowpocalypse’) — Portmanteau words linking ‘snow’ with ‘apocalypse’ and ‘armageddon’, used to describe the record snowfalls in the US East Coast and Northern Europe last winter.
8. 3-D – Three-dimensional (as in movies) is buffo box office this year, but 3-D is being used in new ways generally describing ‘robustness’ in products (such as toothpaste).
9. Shellacking – President Obama’s description of the ‘old-fashioned thumpin’ in George W. Bush’s words, that Democrats received in the 2010 US Mid-term elections.
10. Simplexity – The paradox of simplifying complex ideas in order to make them easier to understand, the process of which only adds to their complexity.

Also Noted: (Spoken Only) Twenty-ten: Finally, a common way to refer to the year; Obamacare (noted as one of the Top Political Buzzwords).

2010 phrases

1. Anger and Rage – Characterizations of the US electorate by the pundits, though closer analyses has revealed more frustration and disappointment. Also witnessed in France, Spain and Greece.
2. Climate Change – (and Global Warming) No. 1 Phrase for the first decade of the 21st century; starts out second decade at No. 2.
3. The Great Recession – The media term frequently used to describe the on-going global economic restructuring.
4. Teachable Moment – Turning any undesirable outcome into a positive opportunity by using it as an object lesson. Unfortunately, there were a plethora of teachable moments in the first year of the new decade.
5. Tea Party — An emerging political movement in the US that has upset the balance of power in the US Congress.
6. Ambush Marketing – Cashing in at an event by taking on the appearance of a sponsor of the event. Most obviously displayed at the Vancouver Winter Olympics and South Africa’s World Cup 2010.
7. Lady Gaga — Gaga, herself, became a buzzword in the global entertainment industry in 2010.
8. Man Up – This election cycle’s signature retort from the women running for office to their male opponents.
9. Pass the bill to be able to see what’s in it — Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s now infamous quip underlying the complexity of the Healthcare Reform legislation.
10. Obamamania — Notable only in it fall from grace; Obamamania now ranks at the bottom of this year’s political buzzwords.

Also Noted — Don’t Touch My Junk: One reaction to the TSA new search policies.

2009 words

The Top Words of the Year for 2009 were headed by Twitter.

1. twitter — The ability to encapsulate human thought in 140 characters
2. Obama- — The word stem transforms into scores of new words like ObamaCare
3. H1N1 — The formal (and politically correct) name for Swine Flu
4. stimulus — The $800 billion aid package meant to help mend the US economy
5. vampire — Vampires are very much en vogue, now the symbol of unrequited love
6. 2.0 — The 2.0 suffix is attached to the next generation of everything
7. deficit — Lessons from history are dire warnings here
8. hadron — Ephemeral particles subject to collision in the Large Hadron Collider
9. healthcare — The direction of which is the subject of intense debate in the US
10. transparency — Elusive goal for which many 21st c. governments are striving
11. outrage — In response to large bonuses handed out to ‘bailed-out’ companies
12. bonus — The incentive pay packages that came to symbolize greed and excess
13. unemployed — And underemployed amount to close to 20% of US workforce
14. foreclosure — Forced eviction for not keeping up with the mortgage payments
15. cartel — In Mexico, at the center of the battle over drug trafficking

2009 phrases

Rank/Phrase/Comments

1. King of Pop –Elvis was ‘The King;’ MJ had to settle for ‘King of Pop’
2. Obama-mania — One of the scores of words from the Obama-word stem
3. climate change — Considered politically neutral compared to global warming
4. swine flu — Popular name for the illness caused by the H1N1 virus
5. Too Large to Fail — Institutions that are deemed necessary for financial stability
6. cloud computing — Using the Internet for a variety of computer services
7. public option — The ability to buy health insurance from a government entity
8. Jai Ho! — A Hindi shout of joy or accomplishment
9. Mayan calendar — Consists of various ‘cycles,’ one of which ends on 21 December 2012
10. God particle — The Higgs boson, believed to hold the secrets of the Big Bang

Decade 2000-2009 words

The Top Words of the Decade from 2000 to 2009 were headed by Global Warming.

1. global warming (2000) Rated highly from Day One of the decade
2. 9/11 (2001) Another inauspicious start to the decade
3. Obama- (2008 ) The US 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) Founders misspelled actual word ‘googol’
8. surge (2007) The strategy that effectively ended the Iraq War
9. Chinglish (2005) The Chinese-English Hybrid language growing larger as Chinese influence expands
10. tsunami (2004) Southeast Asian Tsunami took 250,000 lives
11. H1N1 (2009) More commonly known as Swine Flu
12. subprime (2007) Subprime mortgages were another bubble to burst
13. dot.com (2000) The Dot.com bubble engendered no lifelines, no bailouts
14. Y2K (2000) The Year 2000: all computers would turn to pumpkins at the strike of midnight
15. misunderestimate (2002) One of the first and most enduring of Bushisms
16. chad (2000) Those Florida voter punched card fragments that the presidency would turn aupon
17. twitter (2008) A quarter of a billion references on Google
18. WMD (2002) Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction
19. blog (2003) First called ‘web logs’ which contracted into blogs
20. texting (2004) Sending 140 character text messages over cell phones
21. slumdog (2008) Child inhabitants of Mumba’s slums
22. sustainable (2006) The 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) Would Iraq War end up like Vietnam, another ‘quagmire’?
25. truthiness (2006) Stephen Colbert’s addition to the language appears to be a keeper

Also worth noting: ’Embedded’ (2003) to embed reporters with US Troops

Decade 2000-2009 phrases

1. climate change (2000) Green words in every form dominant the decade
2. Financial Tsunami (2008) One quarter of the world’s wealth vanishes seemingly overnight
3. ground zero (2001) Site of 9/11terrorist attack in New York City
4. War on Terror (2001) 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) H1N1, please, so as not to offend the pork industry or religious sensitivities!
7. “Let’s Roll!” (2001) Todd Beamer’s last words before Flight 93 crashed into the PA countryside
8. Red State/Blue State (2004) Republican or Democratic control of states
9. carbon footprint (2007) How much CO² does an activity produce?
10. shock-and-awe (2003) Initial strategy of Iraq War
11. Ponzi scheme (2009) Madoff’s strategy reaped billions & heartache
12. Category 4 (2005) Force of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans’ seawalls and levies
13. King of Pop (2000) Elvis was the King, MJ the King (of Pop)
14. “Stay the course” (2004) Dubya’s off-stated guidance for Iraq War
15. “Yes, we can!” (2008) Obama’s winning campaign slogan
16. “Jai Ho!” (2008) Shout of joy from ‘Slumdog Millionaire’
17. “Out of the Mainstream” (2003) Complaint about any opposition’s political platform
18. cloud computing (2007) Using the Internet as a large computational device
19. threat fatigue (2004) One too many terrorist threat alerts
20. same-sex marriage (2003) Marriage of gay couples

Other well regarded word lists

A Word a Year

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. 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".

Germany

In Germany, the Wort des Jahres has been selected since 1972 (i.e., for the year of 1971 and up) by the Society of the German Language.

In addition, the Unwort des Jahres (Unword of the Year or No-no Word of the Year) has been nominated since 1991, as the word in the public speech which is deemed inappropriate and an insult to human dignity. See "Überfremdung" for an example.

Many words are sometimes nominated for both titles.

See also

• Neologism
• Language Report from Oxford University Press
• List of Merriam–Webster's Words of the Year
• Top Words of the Year from Global Language Monitor
• Kanji of the year

Further reading

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

External links

• Official Word of the Year Website for Webster's New World Dictionary
• Austrian Word of the Year
• GLM's Top words from 2000 - present
• Liechtenstein Word of the Year
• Switzerland Word of the Year
• Canadian Word of the Year