Words of the Year
Posted by: Mary Ellen Quinn
The New Oxford American Dictionary has announced its Word of the Year: unfriend. Also announced were 2009’s Notable Word Clusters, the majority of which have to do with President Obama: Obamanomics, Obamanation, etc.
Although there were Word of the Year contenders from the economy (freemium, for example), politics (death panel) and other categories, Oxford seems to draw most of its winners from technology. There’s a recent blog post on CrunchGear on Oxford’s 2009 pick as well as picks from past years and how accurately they’ve reflected the infiltration of tech into mainstream language.
The Webster’s New World College Dictionary 2009 Word of the Year is distracted driving.
Meanwhile, The American Dialect Society is accepting nominations for both 2009 Word of the Year and 2000-2009 Word of the Decade. Recent Word of the Year winners have included bailout (2008) and subprime (2007).
November 23rd, 2009 at 4:34 pm
[...] Oxford’s recent announcement of its Word of the Year (unfriend), Merriam-Webster has revealed it own WOTY, which is based on actual lookups in the [...]