Merriam-Webster's 2008 Word of the Year
Merriam-Webster has announced its 2008 "Word of the Year." The winner? "Disemvowel" "Bailout," which "received the highest intensity of lookups on Merriam-Webster Online over the shortest period of time." And the next four in the Top Ten list:
2. vet#1 Word of the Year for 2008 (via Michael Leddy's Orange Crate Art)
3. socialism
4. maverick
5. bipartisan
the latest
latest episodes
The majority of these lookups were for high school papers that start
"Merriam-Webster defines socialism as...."
It would be interesting to have the same information for the OED. I imaging that most people who use the OED already know what all those words mean.
This is especially hilarious considering that just a simple definition of three of these terms won't get them the gist of what they actually mean.
Top 60 Japanese catchphrases of the year from Pink Tentacle. The Japanese seem to be having more fun than us.
This sums up America perfectly.
I can see it now.
"Yeah, fucking liberals, obama is a god-damned socialist!"
(goes to m-w and looks it up)
I think "maverick" has been officially ruined by the 2008 election. The third entry for the word should be:
Meaningless slogan of predictable behavior & knee-jerk morality gratingly repeated, often used in every line of a wooden, rehearsed speech.
It'll be at least five years until you can call something a maverick and not get socked in the mouth or dismissed with a eye-roll.
I imagine looking up "socialist" and "maverick" to see if the words mean what they really think they mean. Or if they mean what I've always thought they meant.
I saw the title of this post and immediately thought: it had better not be MAVERICK.
I guess #4 isn't too far off for a guess!
I'd feel pretty awful if I had to look up a word that Sarah Palin had just used.
The big word-of-the-year vote is the American Dialect Society’s. It's the longest-running vote of its kind in the world and the word-of-the-year event up to which all others lead. It will be held in San Francisco on Friday, January 9, 2009.
The best “word of the year” candidates will be:
—new or newly popular in 2008
—widely or prominently used in 2008
—indicative or reflective of the national discourse
Nominations should be sent to woty@americandialect.org.
More information at http://americandialect.org/2008WOTY/
(I'm a vice president of the society and a member of its new words committee.)
The disemvowel strike-through was my first laugh of the day.
I don't know if this speaks more to our stupidity or our newfound fascination with electoral politics. Either way, I find it somewhat disconcerting.