Words of The Year
| Year | Word | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1990 | bushlips | (similar to "bullshit" – stemming from President George H. W. Bush's 1988 "Read my lips: no new taxes" broken promise) |
| 1991 | The mother of all | (as in Saddam Hussein's foretold "Mother of all battles") |
| 1992 | Not! | (meaning "just kidding") |
| 1993 | information superhighway | |
| 1994 | cyber, morph | (to change form) |
| 1995 | Web and (to) newt | (to act aggressively as a newcomer). |
| 1996 | mom | (as in "soccer mom"). |
| 1997 | millennium bug | |
| 1998 | e- | (as in "e-mail"). |
| 1999 | Y2K | |
| 2000 | chad | (from the 2000 Presidential Election controversy in Florida). |
| 2001 | 9-11 | |
| 2002 | weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) | |
| 2003 | metrosexual | |
| 2004 | red state, blue state, purple state | (from the 2004 presidential election). |
| 2005 | truthiness | popularized on The Colbert Report. |
| 2006 | plutoed | (demoted or devalued, as happened to the former planet Pluto). |
| 2007 | subprime | (an adjective used to describe a risky or less than ideal loan, mortgage, or investment). |
| 2008 | bailout | (a rescue by government of a failing corporation) |
| 2009 | tweet | (a short message sent via the Twitter service) |
| 2010 | app | |
| 2011 | occupy | (in reference to the Occupy movement) |
Read more about this topic: American Dialect Society
Famous quotes containing the words words and/or year:
“There was a young man of Japan
Whose limericks never would scan.
When folks told him so,
He replied, “Yes, I know,
But I always try to get as many words into the last line as I possibly can.””
—Anonymous.
“Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still as the spiral grew,
He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)