The word of the year for 2008 is Obama

[Dennis Baron]

The Web of Language has picked Obama as the 2008 Word of the Year.

That's right, the word of the year for 2008 is Obama. It's a proper  
noun referring to the 44th president of the United States.

Between the credit crunch and the financial collapse, it looked for a  
while like the English language couldn't afford a word of the year  
this year.



But that was before English got a last-minute bailout in the form of  
Barack Obama and his Camelot Frères financial dream time. According to  
a pseudo-scientific calculation made by CNN's Rachel Maddow, when  
Obama speaks, stocks go up, but when George Bush praises free-market  
capitalism, they tank.. . .


Read the post on the Web of Language

http://illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage


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://illinois.edu/goto/debaron

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







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