The ADS WOTY conference

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:05 AM -0500 12/29/04, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>On Wed, Dec 29, 2004 at 09:27:39AM -0600, Barbara Need wrote:
>>  There is a weekly column in the Chicago Tribune's Tempo section about
>>  language. Today's column on words of the year refers to the American
>>  Dialect Society's annual Word of the Year conference!
>
>It also refers to the fact "The Oxford English Dictionary
>named "chav" as its 'buzzword' of 2004." News to the OED.
>
Well, if the OED had "chad" as the buzzword of 2000 (it was the WOTY
that year, after all), this makes sense.  "chap" would have been the
jolly good buzzword for 2001, "char" in 2002 (in preparation for the
Mary Poppins musical that just opened), "Chas" in 2003 (for the Crown
Prince and well-known language purist), and that brings us to "chav"
for 2004.

larry