The New Oxford American Dictionary Word of the Year is.... UNFRIEND. That's right, the negation of the verbification of 'friend'. Well, it's not quite as cringe-worthy as some of the runners-up...
Teabagger?!? And previous winners of this honor were
Hypermiling (2008),
Locavore (2007),
Carbon-Neutral (2006) and
Podcast (2005) (links include each year's finalists, including frugalista, staycation, bacn, mumblecore, Islamofascism, funner, lifehack and squick). Best comment about the WotY (so far)?
"an unreliable yet fascinating barometer of tech". But, at risk of over-editorializing, these look more like candidates for the
Banished Words List. Clearly better is the recent list of
"A Word a Year, 1906-2006" from Oxford's website (if only for the invaluable perspective of time).
posted by oneswellfoop
on Nov 17, 2009 -
73 comments
Java Demo: "four-letter words have a special status in the english language and culture. counting in at over 1650 words,...this small project is an attempt to give a spacial overview of the entirety of this part of english language heritage, as well as to explore and visualize relations between all those words."
posted by hortense
on Jun 4, 2009 -
18 comments
Why would an evolutionary biologist study words? It turns out there is an
astonishing parallel between the evolution of words in a lexicon and the evolution of genes in an organism. The word
two, for example, has been around much longer than most, and will likely be with us for millennia, whereas the comparatively rare and recent word
dirty has undergone many mutations, and will probably be extinct in a few hundred years. Professor
Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading, UK, tells us why on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's program
As It Happens. Pull slider to 16:00 to start the
seven minute interview.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium
on Mar 7, 2009 -
49 comments
Save the Words. Do lost words still have meaning? J
ust because society has neglected them doesn't make them any less of a word.
How do you get lost words back in the dictionary? With lexicogra
ph
ers scanning publications and other communication for words not curr
ently housed in the dictiona
ry, all y
ou need do is use your adopted words as often as possible.
Go,
Adop
t a Word.
Like gra
oc
rac
y.*
* - government by an old woman or women.
[more inside]
posted by Tufa
on Jan 29, 2009 -
37 comments
International House of Logorrhea, at
The Phrontistry, a free online dictionary of weird and unusual words to help enhance your vocabulary. Generous language resources,
2 and 3 letter Scrabble words l
The Compass DeRose Guide to Emotion Words l all kinds of glossaries for
color terms,
wisdom,
love and attraction,
scientific instruments,
manias and obsessions,
feeding and eating,
carriages and chariots,
dance styles and all kinds of fun word stuff.
[more inside]
posted by nickyskye
on Jan 11, 2009 -
12 comments
Confusing Words is a collection of 3210 words that are troublesome to readers and writers. Words are grouped according to the way they are most often confused or misused.
posted by blue_beetle
on Aug 11, 2008 -
76 comments
A poem that builds upon itself and grows as the world wide web grows.
The Apostrophe Engine is a website operated by Bill Kenney and Darren Wershler-Henry. It is the source of the poems in
apostrophe, a book published by ECW Press in 2006.
The home page of the Apostrophe Engine site presents the full text of a poem called "apostrophe", written by Bill in 1993. In this digital version of the poem, each line is now a hyperlink.
How it works. [more inside]
posted by Fizz
on May 28, 2008 -
29 comments
The Dictionary of Coming to Terms with the Past (
Wörterbuch der 'Vergangenheitsbewältigung') examines over 1,000 German words that have Nazi connotations, such as
Endlösung (Final Solution) and
Selektion, It is featured in a
review by der Spiegel. Such loaded words still constitute a minefield for Germans today, as the Archbishop of Cologne
discovered last year in a situation
analogized to Senator Biden's use of the term "articulate" when referring to Senator Obama.
[more inside]
posted by Rumple
on Feb 17, 2008 -
49 comments
"This year, in a gesture of humanitarian relief, the (Lake Superior State University Banished Words) committee restores "truthiness," banned on last year's list, to formal use. This comes after comedians and late-night hosts were thrown under the bus and rendered speechless by a nationwide professional writers' strike. The silence is deafening."Of course, "
(thrown) under the bus"* is on this year's Banished List, along with "
perfect storm", "
webinar"*, "
waterboarding", "
post-9/11", "
wordsmith", "
back in the day", "
surge", "
x is the new y", "
give back" and other seemingly "
random" words and phrases.
*One of the requirements for a Banished Word or Phrase is that it has been used as a title for a Blogspot or Typepad blog. [more inside]
posted by wendell
on Jan 1, 2008 -
102 comments
