Dictionary Society of North America

"Occupy" gets ADS nod as 2011 Word of the Year

For the full details, including juicy items like "most outrageous" and "most creative" words, and a photo featuring the backs of a lot of linguist heads, visit the American Dialect Society website. 

"Pragmatic" is Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year

In choosing the 2011 Word, the editors were following the electronic footsteps of their readers, who looked up "pragmatic" in increasing numbers during and following Congress's August debate over the debt ceiling. For more details, including comments from DSNA members Peter Sokolowski (Merriam-Webster editor at large) and Allan Metcalf (executive secretary of the American Dialect Society, which picks its WOTY next month), check out the AP wire story.

Tergiversate

Now, I have to hand it to Dictionary.com, tergiversate is a great word. When I was in third form, I compiled a list of new and cool words as I encountered them in my reading, and I still remember that one of them was tergiversate. (Two others were haruspex and trireme. I must have been reading ancient history.)

Dictionary.com has chosen tergiversate as word of the year, eschewing neologisms and, as Jay Schwartz, Dictionary.com's Head of Content told The Huffington Post: "We think that it's immensely rewarding to find existing words that capture a precise experience, and this year, tumult has been the norm rather than the exception."

Oh--what does it mean? Flip-flop, equivocate, turn your back. Tergiversate, o man, foreswear thy foolish ways!

As if Walmart opening at midnight weren't bad enough...

...now Oxford is announcing the Word of the Year when we still have five weeks of 2011 words to experience! Here's what the Independent has to say about "squeezed middle":

Speaking about [Ed] Miliband's term for those seen as bearing the brunt of government tax burdens while having the least with which to relieve it, Susie Dent, spokesperson for Oxford Dictionaries and language expert on Channel 4's Countdown, said: "The speed with which squeezed middle has taken root, and the likelihood of its endurance while anxieties deepen, made it a good candidate for Word of the Year."

The runners-up include Arab Spring, Hacktivism, Occupy, Phone Hacking and Sodcasting.

Alas, I don't have the self-control of the American Dialect Society, which soberly refrains from choosing its Word until January... so here goes. Writing from the perspective of Western New York State, my Word of the Year is "fracking."

Wrapping up the annual fuss over new words

Lexicography is a very predictable business. Four years as your executive secretary, monitoring the press and the blogs for dictionary news to share, has brought four rounds of local newspapers reporting that civic organizations are donating dictionaries to school children (invariably leading with an enthusiastic endorsement from a precocious nine-year-old).  I've read four years worth of December buzz about the Word of the Year. And with September approaching, it's time for the outbursts of shock and horror as Oxford, Collins, and Merriam Webster, among others, play Heidi Klum and announce "who is in and who is out." 

As I was procrastinating about reporting the uproar over the inclusion of "bromance" and "helicopter parent," or the ashcanning of "charabanc," I saw that the Visual Thesaurus was briskly reporting on the annual fuss, with a piece yesterday by Dennis Baron, on the new 150 words in Merriam-Websters's Collegiate Dictionary. They followed up today with a piece by Baltimore Sun copy editor John E. McIntyre, "who argues that journalists reporting on new words often misconstrue the purpose of dictionaries."

So instead of trying to write my own piece, I'll give you some tidbits of what other folks are saying. Hop on board.

Henry Hitchings at the Telegraph observes that, "Hostility to a new word (candidates from the latest Chambers might include “webisode” and “OMG”) is fraught with unarticulated concerns about class, politics, propriety and taste."

The Oxford WordsBlog claims to have added "goldendoodle" so they could include a cute picture of the aforesaid canine on their blog (it is very cute).

The Eight-Track Museum bans the Oxford Concise English Dictionary, in retaliation for dropping the word "cassette tape"--see the story in the Huffington Post.

And Erin McKean in an interview with ABC News reminds us that Wordnik never deletes any words.

Wearily riding the "refudiate" bandwagon

It's Word of the Year time, and jaded neologisticians are tweeting "I told you so" to everyone who will listen. As expected, Sarah Palin's portmanteau word has gotten the nod from Oxford University Press. Here's the story as reported by The New York Times.  DSNA member Ben Zimmer gives us a nuanced commentary--and an antedating--in his Word Routes blog on the Visual Thesaurus.

Didn't these announcements used to come after Thanksgiving? What's next, the Alphabet Song in October!??