Word of the Decade Nominations Open for 2000-2009

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 11:26 AM, Grant Barrett
<gbarrett at worldnewyork.org> wrote:
>
> At the American Dialect Society annual meeting in Baltimore next
> January, not only will the Society choose Words of the Year just past,
> but members and friends will also have the solemn responsibility of
> choosing a Word of the Decade 2000–2009.
>
> http://www.americandialect.org/woty2009/
[snip]

Since the overall WOTY winners didn't necessarily have much staying
power (I'm lookin' at you, "plutoed"), I'd suggest we take a look back
at what won the "most useful" and "most likely to succeed" categories
in each year. From this vantage point, it looks like 2002's "google"
and "blog" are obvious frontrunners.


2000
most useful: civil union
most likely to succeed: muggle

2001
most useful: facial profiling / second-hand speech
most likely to succeed: 9-11 (same as WOTY)

2002
most useful: google, v.
most likely to succeed: blog

2003
most useful: flexitarian
most likely to succeed: SARS

2004
most useful: phish, v.
most likely to succeed: red/blue/purple states (same as WOTY)

2005
most useful: podcast
most likely to succeed: sudoku

2006
most useful: climate canary
most likely to succeed: YouTube, v.

2007
most useful: green- (prefix/combining form)
most likely to succeed: green- (prefix/combining form)

2008
most useful: Barack Obama (combining form)
most likely to succeed: shovel-ready



--Ben Zimmer

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