Legal Writing

Word of the year lists

By Pam_Nelson

I  am a fan of word of the year lists. They give us insight into our times. They also give us grist for the blog mill. 

The American Dialect Society has chosen "tweet" as the 2009 word of the year, and "google" as the word of the decade.  The society is made up of linguists, grammarians, writers, editors and others, and this is the 20th year it has issued its list. Here is what Grant Barrett, chairman of the new words committee, said in the news release about the society's choices: "Both words are, in the end, products of the Information Age, where every person has the ability to satisfy curiosity and to broadcast to a select following, both via the Internet."

Indeed, "Tweet" and "Google" do tell the story of the past year and the past decade. We increasingly live our lives online. I send messages via e-mail, search for answers with Google or Bing, have a blog, maintain a profile on Facebook, post on Twitter and keep up with my far-flung friends and family mostly through the Internet. Via a photo-sharing Web site, I am even watching my newborn grandniece grow. I am happy about all this online activity, but I realize that some people still don't get it and some others don't like it. They are either frightened by the Internet or just put off by its pervasiveness. And some of us who make our living in the print media wish our bosses would hurry up and figure out how to make some money off this Internet thing.

The American Dialect Society's list also features the most creative word of the year:  "Dracula sneeze" for the practice of using the crook of our elbows to cover our faces when we don't have a tissue or handkerchief handy. The society chose "hike the Appalachian Trail" as the euphemism of the year.

Download the PDF of the American Dialect Society's whole list here. (Added: You might also be interested in John McIntyre's blog post about the society's meeting and Ben Zimmer's post at Visual Thesaurus.)

Along with the word of the year list comes a list of banished words from a group at Lake Superior State University. Some of my colleagues at The N&O are dismissive of this list, but you just have to admire these folks for getting a fairly obscure Michigan school in the news once a year. The list includes "tweet" and "friend" as verb -- both terms that appear on other words of the year lists, although it's actually a form of "friend" that is on the New Oxford American Dictionary list: "unfriend."  

No one should take the banished words list seriously. We have no need to stop using "sexting" (although the practice is unsavory among teenagers -- gracious!), "shovel-ready" or any Obama-prefix words. I would rather not read "teachable moment" again, except in irony, but that's just me.

My own choice for word of the year is "layoff." It is a word that dominated my work life and intruded into my personal life in 2009. I could put it on my banished words list, but I doubt that I have seen the last of it. 

Full post as published by Triangle Grammar Guide on January 10, 2010 (boomark / email).