anti-WOTY blogging

[Benjamin Zimmer]

There are some bloggers complaining about the choice of "plutoed" as
WOTY, on the grounds that "no one used it" before the ADS vote:

http://www.populationstatistic.com/archives/2007/01/19/im-plutoing-plutoed/
http://digg.com/offbeat_news/Plutoed_Shouldn_t_a_word_of_the_year_be_one_that_people_actually_say
http://www.lastpodcast.net/2007/01/21/plutoed-the-word-of-the-year-nobody-ever-used/

"Plutoed" was noted on ADS-L on Sep. 12, when Arnold Zwicky forwarded
the "Urban Word of the Day" email from urbandictionary.com. The quoted
entry dates to Aug. 24, the day of the IAU vote demoting Pluto:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pluto

Also on Aug. 24, Scott Hove created a blog called plutoed.com and
provided a similar definition for the verb in his first post:

http://plutoed.com/plutoed_our_first_post/index.html

Granted, it's still basically a stunt word, but now it's being
perceived (by some) as *our* stunt word...


--Ben Zimmer

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