2.1.07 Word Wide Famine - Time to Biden Your Lip

Each year the American Dialect Society, along with other formidable wordsmiths, produce lists of new words and most notably THE word of the year. Before announcing this year’s winner for Word of the Year, here is a list of past winners:

2005 - truthiness: truth regardless of the facts
2004 - red/blue/purple states: a way to designate Republican/Democratic leaning regions
2003 - metrosexual: fashion-conscious heterosexual male
2002 - WMD: Weapons of mass destruction
2001 - 9/11: Infamous day of terrorist attack
2000 - chad: small scrap of paper punched from a voting card

(Also chosen, Word of the Decade - web. Word of the 20th Century - jazz. Word of the Millenium - she).

The winner of this year’s Word of the Year? Plutoed.

To be plutoed is to be demoted or devalued. As you recall it was in 2006 that the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union chose to no longer designate Pluto as a planet. Thousands of elementary school mobiles are no longer displaying the planets correctly. Supposedly you now can say those mobiles have been plutoed.

Other words of note this year include:

climate canary. an organism or species whose poor health or declining numbers hint at a larger environmental catastrophe.

data Valdez: an accidental release of a large quantity of private or privileged information.

flog: a fake blog created by a corporation to promote a product or a television show.

tramp stamp: a tattoo on a women’s upper bottom (or lower back).

Words matter.

Yesterday Joe Biden’s ambition to be President was plutoed by a few ill advised words. In describing the Obama syndrome Biden unfortunately used a few code words usually used as racial slurs. Clearly the words we use matter.

Despite our apparent famine for words we as a people still hunger for more. All the major dictionaries this year have added hundreds of new words. To stay current we best learn them. An ancient prophet said that the end of the world would be visited by a famine of words. Global waning of language will certainly be our demise. What are you doing to guard against it? Thomas Carlyle wrote “The true University of these days is a Collection of Books.” Here at CitizenU we are reading those books, albeit one word at a time. Please join us.

Check out more from the American Dialect Society.