Photo from the Linguistic Society of America’s Flickr stream
The word ‘App’ was chosen as the word of the year by the American Dialect Society. You can see by the slide here it beat out both ‘nom’ and ‘junk.’ But what’s interesting here is that not only is there an American Dialect Society, but that they actually get together and vote by a show of hands on the words. Don’t believe me, take a gander at the photos from the event.
According to the society’s press release, “the vote is the longest-running such vote anywhere, the only one not tied to commercial interests, and the word-of-the-year event up to which all others lead. It is fully informed by the members’ expertise in the study of words, but it is far from a solemn occasion. Members in the 121-year-old organization include linguists, lexicographers, etymologists, grammarians, historians, researchers, writers, authors, editors, professors, university students, and independent scholars. In conducting the vote, they act in fun and do not pretend to be officially inducting words into the English language. Instead they are highlighting that language change is normal, ongoing, and entertaining.”
That paragraph right there is so delightfully nerdy I don’t even know what to say. You should read the entire press release (warning, pdf) to see how much the web and web culture plays in the words of the year.
