Washington Post on "surge"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/09/AR2007010901610.html
surge (surj) n. 1. a sudden increase . . . in political parlance
By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 10, 2007; Page C01
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Skipping to the good part:

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The word has achieved so much currency that it was in the running to
be the year's most notable, as chosen by the American Dialect Society,
a 117-year-old organization of linguists, lexicographers and other
"word people," at its annual meeting last week.
Wayne Glowka, an English professor at Georgia College and State
University who chairs the society's new-words committee, says the
group considered the word as a euphemism. That's nothing new for words
with military origins, he notes. The military has long been a prime
source of such words: "collateral damage" to describe civilian war
deaths; "daisy cutter," for a bomb with a huge blast area; "friendly
fire," for shooting at those on the same side.
"Surge" failed to win the group's word-of-the-year competition (that
honor went to "Plutoed" -- to demote or devalue something, as happened
to the planet last year). "The argument was that 'surge' really didn't
emerge until late in the year, so it couldn't be the word for all of
2006," Glowka says. But he thinks that seems destined to change:
"I'd say it's likely to be a very important word for 2007."
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--Ben Zimmer

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org