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 the year, words of, words and/or year:
“For myself I found that the occupation of a day-laborer was the most independent of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in a year to support one. The laborer’s day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of his labor; but his employer, who speculates from month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the other.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“and the deaf soul
struggles, strains forward, to lip-read what it needs:
and something is said, quickly,
in words of cloud-shadows moving and
the unmoving turn of the road, something
not quite caught ...”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“Malcolm’s words
fire darts, the victor’s tireless
thrusts, words hung above the world
change as it may, he said it, and
for this he was killed,”
—Imamu Amiri Baraka (b. 1934)
“These young women have had four years of very special space.... This has been special space. This has been safe space. But when they graduate, they will begin to deal on a daily basis, all day long, month after month, year after year, with the realities that still haunt our nation.”
—Johnnetta Betsch Cole (b. 1936)