In the News: Words, Words, Words

Update: The votes are in! See the American Dialect Society's website for a PDF of the complete tallies and winners (and definitions). See below for a list of the winners in each category. 

The American Dialect Society’s Word of the Year nominations have been announced, grouped in helpful categories such as most useful, most creative, most euphemistic, most unnecessary, and the not-to-be-missed most outrageous. Celebrity-inspired words kardash, Mellencamp, and Tebowing all made the final list. As did a few possibly controversial compound words, such as regime alteration and people’s mic. Judging by a few conversations I’ve seen on Twitter among editors and journalists, the latter may also be controversial to those who prefer the spelling mike. The society published the nominations on their website as a handy PDF, but you can also find them on Visual Thesaurus’s Word Routes column by Ben Zimmer, chair of the New Words Committee. The final vote for Word of the Year (overall and in each category) will occur tonight in Portland, Oregon, beginning at 5:30 PT. Zimmer notes in his post for Language Log, “Those who are unable to attend can follow the action via Twitter at @americandialect (using the #woty11 hashtag).” 

The ADS list includes categories for the most (Arab spring?) and least (brony?) likely to succeed, a question lexicographer Grant Barrett asks in his own list of catchwords from 2011, “Which Words Will Live On?” For those in the mike camp, note that Barrett (or perhaps the New York Times copyeditor) uses this spelling in his definition of human megaphone. 

In the “has succeeded too well” category, amazing, baby bump, man cave, ginormous and others made this year’s Lake Superior State University “2012 List of Banished Words.” Though the idea of a “banished words” list rubs some the wrong way, I tend to agree with what editor Mark Allen noted on Twitter, “I enjoy LSSU's banished words list. Nothing ever really gets banished, and it's good to discuss the changing language .” You’re perfectly free to use amazing as often as you'd like or to switch it up with a synonym now and again. Perhaps amazeballs (nominated in the “most unnecessary” category by ADS) fits your style?

American Dialect Society 2011 Word of the Year winners: 

Word of the Year: Occupy

Most Useful: Humblebrag

Most Creative: Mellencamp

Most Unnecessary: Bi-winning

Most Outrageous: Assholocracy

Most Euphemistic: Job creator

Most Likely to Succeed: Cloud

Least Likely to Succeed: Brony

"Occupy" Words (new category): the 99%, 99-percenters (and other "percent" words)

Image copyright M. Unal Ozmen.