Sunday, December 09, 2012

"Word of the Year" top-ten list

Thanks to Meg Weaver of WoodenHorse.com for this concise round-up on the word(s) of the year:

"... the Merriam-Webster dictionary releasing its "Top Ten Words of the Year" is the main event. This year is the first time that it has declared two words as the official Word of the Year: “Capitalism” and “socialism”. “These were looked up frequently together,” an M-W spokesman said. And looked up about twice as many times as last year, probably due to the health care debate.

Other words on the top ten list? Democracy, globalization, marriage and bigot – and “malarkey”, which is what Vice President Joe Biden used in his debate with Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan. Look-ups of malarkey represented “the largest spike of a single word on the website by percentage, at 3,000 percent, in a single 24-hour period this year.”

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So even if we are resorting to online dictionaries, at least people are using technology for a literate purpose, at least now and then...