WOTY 2009 nominations

[Garson O'Toole]

Victor Steinbok wrote
> I am also not convinced that "tether" should be on the "least likely to
> succeed" list. The expression is quite common. Again, the meaning is a
> bit too narrowly defined. It is used as a euphemism for both wired and
> invisible connections, e.g., "He's permanently tethered to his laptop."
> You will also occasionally hear "umbilical cord" in the same meaning.


Chris Waigl wrote
> Subject:      Re: WOTY 2009 nominations
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On 8 Jan 2010, at 13:16, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>
>> Greetings from Baltimore. Grant Barrett has posted the results of last
>> night's nominating session for Word of the Year / Word of the Decade
>> here:
>>
>> http://www.americandialect.org/2009-WOTY-Final-Nominations.pdf
>>
>> The final vote will take place this evening at 5:30.
>
> Is "tether" really supposed to be nominated in "*least* likely to succeed"? It's part of my and many of my friends' unremarkable everyday vocabulary, though sometimes with a slightly larger meaning. For example, I just made a time-lapse video using a still camera tethered to a laptop (and controlled via software running on the laptop).
>
> Me, I'd put it in "most likely to succeed".
>
> Chris
>
> --
> Chris Waigl -- http://chryss.eu -- http://eggcorns.lascribe.net
> twitter: chrys -- friendfeed: chryss


I used the "least likely to succeed" candidate term "tether" during
the holidays. I wished that my cell phone could slip into a cradle
near my GPS navigator to tether with it and provide traffic reports
and updated maps. I also wished that my cell phone would tether with
my laptop so I could access the web while I visited a vacation home
without an internet connection.

As a computer scientist I think that the concept of "tethering" will
grow in importance; however, the precise word assigned to the concept
has not been fixed yet and it may change.

Garson

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