Another WOTY candidate: hanging chads

[Arnold Zwicky]

heard on npr this morning: a piece in which "pregnant chad"
(clearly a mass-noun occurrence) was followed not long after
by "chads" (clearly a count-noun occurrence).

looks like "chad" is going the way of "e-mail" (or "email", if
you prefer): many speakers can use it either as a mass noun
("e-mail has been piling up in my mailbox") or a count noun
("two e-mails have just arrived").

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)