Nominations for WOTYs?? - It's "austerity" for M-W for 2010

[Tom Zurinskas]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101220/ap_on_re_us/us_word_of_the_year

Austerity, the 14th century noun defined as "the quality or state of being austere" and "enforced or extreme economy," set off enough searches that Merriam-Webster named it as its Word of the Year for 2010, the dictionary's editors announced Monday.
John Morse, president and publisher of the Springfield, Mass.-based dictionary, said "austerity" saw more than 250,000 searches on the dictionary's free online tool and came with more coverage of the debt crisis.
"What we look for ... what are the words that have had spikes that strike us very much as an anomaly for their regular behavior," Morse said. "The word that really qualifies this year for that is `austerity'."
Runners-up also announced Monday included "pragmatic," `'moratorium," `'socialism," and "bigot" — the last word resulted from public uses by former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former CNN host Rick Sanchez and former NPR senior analyst Juan Williams.
Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster's editor-at-large, said this year's top 10 words were associated with a news event or coverage, which editors believe resulted in prolonged jumps in searches.

I'd say it's a year of "recovery".  Not near as austere as 2009.  Maybe there were so many searches because folkes wanted to know what the big word means or how to say it.  Unfortunatley, the m-w.com speaker mispronounces it as ah-STAIR-uh-tee (~aasttairutee), instead of awe-STAIR-uh-tee, (~austtairutee).  The m-w.com phonetic notation clearly indicates "awe".
For me it would be ~austtairidee.  (Most "ity" endings go to ~idee.

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL7+
see truespel.com phonetic spelling












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> Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2010 21:44:22 -0800
> From: grantbarrett at GMAIL.COM
> Subject: Re: Nominations for WOTYs??
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Grant Barrett
> Subject: Re: Nominations for WOTYs??
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Of course.
>
> On Dec 19, 2010, at 10:24, David Barnhart wrote:
>
> > Are the nominations for WOTY going to be posted on the ADS Website?
> >
> >
> >
> > DKB
> >
> >
> >
> > Barnhart at highlands.com
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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