The 2009 word of the year is "teabag," but the word of the decade has to be "wingnut"

[Dennis Baron]

There's a new post on the Web of Language:

The 2009 word of the year is "teabag," but the word of the decade has
to be "wingnut"

It's time once again to name the word of the year, and since we're
coming up to 2010, it's also time to pick the word of the decade. The
word of the year for 2009 is "teabag"; but the word of the first
decade of the new millennium has to be "wingnut."

The New Oxford American Dictionary just named "unfriend" its Word of
the Year, defining it, "to remove someone as a 'friend' on a social
networking site such as Facebook." Unfriending has become the thing to
do to your ex. Just recently, Lou Dobbs unfriended CNN, and Sarah
Palin unfriended John McCain and the entire 2008 Republican
Presidential Campaign. . . .

read the rest of this post on the Web of Language:  http://bit.ly/weblan
____________________
Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

http://www.illinois.edu/goto/debaron

read the Web of Language:
http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage

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