Words Of The Year 2008

We all know that business channels declare the Businessman of the Year, certain media houses announce the Indian of the Year and so on, but do you know that publishers of dictionaries like the Oxford American Dictionary, Merriam Webster Dictionary and certain language societies like the American Dialect Society, and organizations who monitor trends in the English language like Global Language Monitor announce the Word Of The Year (WOTY), each year?

So which word has made it to be the WOTY 2008?

Have a look:
The New Oxford American Dictionary has announced their Oxford WOTY 2008: …….
Oh, but don’t we generally announce the nominations first?
So here you go…
There are many nominations, I would like to list two which did not make it to the final list though, which I liked:
staycation – a vacation taken at or near one’s home, taking day trips, and such other activities
tweet – a short message sent via the Twitter service, using a cellphone or other mobile device.
The finalists from among the nominations for the Oxford WOTY 2008 are:
frugalista – person who leads a frugal lifestyle, but stays fashionable and healthy by swapping clothes, buying second-hand, growing own produce,
moofer – a mobile out of office worker – ie. someone who works away from a fixed workplace, via Blackberry/laptop/wi-fi etc. (also verbal noun, moofing)
If you want to find out more about moofing, visit this website
topless meeting – Hey it is not what you thought! It is a meeting in which the participants are barred from using their laptops, Blackberries, cellphones, etc.
toxic debt – mainly sub-prime debts that are now proving so disastrous to banks. They were parceled up and sent around the global financial system like toxic waste, hence the allusion.
hypermiling - coined in 2004 by Wayne Gerdes, who runs this web site.

Hypermiling or to hypermile, is to attempt to maximize gas mileage by making fuel-conserving adjustments to one’s car and one’s driving techniques. Rather than aiming for good mileage or even great mileage, hypermilers seek to push their gas tanks to the limit and achieve hypermileage, exceeding EPA ratings for miles per gallon.

Oxford Word of the Year 2008: Hypermiling
Many of the methods followed by hypermilers are basic common sense—drive the speed limit, avoid hills and stop-and-go traffic, maintain proper tire pressure, don’t let your car idle, get rid of excess cargo—but others practiced by some devotees may seem slightly eccentric:
• driving without shoes (to increase the foot’s sensitivity on the pedals)
• parking so that you don’t have to back up to exit the space
• “ridge-riding” or driving with your tires lined up with the white line at the edge of the road to avoid driving through water-filled ruts in the road when it’s raining
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger advocates the practice, referring to it as EcoDriving.
I like the word coined by Arnold though!

The Merriam Webster Dictionary WOTY 2008
1. bailout
2. vet
3. socialism
4. maverick
5. bipartisan
6. trepidation
7. precipice
8. rogue
9. misogyny
10. turmoil

And the winner of the Merriam Webster Dictionary WOTY 2008 is :
1. bailout (noun)- a rescue from financial distress

The American Dialect Society’s WOTY 2008

ADS WORD OF THE YEAR WINNER: bailout, the rescue by the government of companies on the brink of failure, including large players in the banking industry.
Other nominees for the ADS word of the year:
Barack Obama: Both names as combining forms in a large number of new words. A combining form is a word or part of a word that can be used as the root or basis of other words.
lipstick on a pig: An adornment of something that can't be made pretty.
change: Not so much a buzzword as political wallpaper, background noise, and ambient energy rolled into one. The idea of discarding old ideas and methods seemed to underlie everything said by national political candidates.
shovel-ready: Used to describe infrastructure projects that can be started quickly when funds become available
game-changer: In business and politics, something that alters the nature of a marketplace, relationship, or campaign. From sports ‘something that changes a match or contest.’


Global Language Monitor

The Global Language Monitor has been selecting the Top Ten Words of the Year since 2000. To select these words and phrases it uses a statistical analysis of language usage in the worldwide print and electronic media, on the Internet and throughout the Blogosphere.

Global Language Monitor announced the Top 10 words and phrases for 2008 as follows:

The Top Ten Words of 2008 announced by Global Language Monitor
1. Change – The top political buzzword of the 2008 US Presidential campaign.
2. Bailout – Would have been higher but was not in the media until Mid-September.
3. Obamamania – Describing the worldwide reaction to Barack Obama’s campaign and subsequent victory in the US presidential race.
4. Greenwashing – Repositioning a product to stress its Earth-friendly attributes.
5. Surge – Military and political strategy often cited as reducing violence in Iraq.
6. Derivative – Exotic financial instruments used to cleverly package junk-grade debt.
7. Subprime – Mortgages that were packaged as derivatives.
8. Foreclosure – The end-result of the sub-prime mess.
9. Phelpsian: New word coined to describe the Phelpsian Pheat of winning eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics.
10. Chinglish – The often amusing Chinese/English language hybrid that Beijing tried to stamp out before the Olympics began.

The Top Ten Phrases of 2008 announced by Global Language Monitor
1. Financial Tsunami – Worldwide financial meltdown ultimately stemming from derivatives used to package subprime mortgages.
2. Global Warming – The No. 2 buzzword of the US Presidential Campaign.
3. Yes We Can — Yes, indeed, he could and he did.
4. Lame Duck – What happens when you wait 2 ½ months from election to inauguration.
5. Working Class Whites – Apparently, working Class Whites is used as a code word for whites who are working class.
6. “It is, what it is” – On everyone’s lips this year meaning ‘unfortunately, those are the facts’.
7. Lip Synching: The fate of Lin Miaoke, the little girl who didn’t sing the song the whole world sings in the Olympics opening ceremony.
8. Price of oil – Oil was supposed to topping out about now at $200/barrel.
9. Super Tuesday – When the race for the Democratic nomination was supposed to be decided.
10. Suddenness Happens – Top Chinglish Phrase from the Beijing Olympics.

Interesting, isnt it?
Words of the Year are not necessarily new words introduced in that year. Just a reflection of the times we have been through. But dont you think that the words largely reflected incidents in the US, mostly the elections held there? Do you think of any words that could have been nominated or actually deserved the WOTY 2008? Which word do you think reflects the scene in India in 2008? Do write in your comments!

Snowball Sentences

A Mumbai-ite does not experience snowfall in his city. Let alone snowfall, winters are getting warmer in the maximum city than ever before!

My post, though, is about snowball sentences.

A snowball sentence is a sentence where each word is one letter longer than the previous one.

As the story goes, a father explained to his ten year old daughter, “A snowball sentence is one in which each word is one letter longer than the preceding word. Do you think you can make a snowball sentence?”
His daughter thought for several minutes before saying,
'I am not that smart, Father.'

I am sure you would have observed that the daughter unknowingly replied in a snowball sentence! Without even realising it, she had constructed a Snowball sentence!

My humble effort to extend this sentence as follows:
I am not that smart father dearest although unknowing surprising fantabulous construction mathemagical inventiveness…
(any takers to help me continue?)

A "snowball sentence" contrived by Dmitri Borgmann - each word is one letter longer than the last:
I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting; nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality, counterbalancing indecipherability, transcendentalizes intercommunications' incomprehensibleness.
(20 words)

Other snowball sentences:
O to see man's stern poetic thought publicly expanding recklessly imaginative mathematical inventiveness, openmindedness unconditionally superfecundating nonantagonistical hypersophisticated interdenominational interpenetrabilities
(20 words)

The longest known snowball sentence is 21 words long:

I am the Lord Jesus Christ, Supreme, Almighty, allseeing, allknowing, allpowerful, transcendant, everlastingly resurrectional, allencompassing, incomprehensible, transubstantiated, metacosmologically supradenominational, tetragrammatonically disestablishmentarian.
(21 words)

Read each of them carefully - they actually make sense!

Interestingly, a very popular short snowball sentence that everyone is very fond of is "I do not know", though many of us distort it to "I don't know", because they really dont know that they are destroying a perfect little snowball sentence!

If you know any snowball sentence, please post it in my comment space. I will feature it in my future post. You could even form one yourself! (Do I hear you say Limericks were easier?)

Blogger's Postscript 1:
George Bush, POTUS, has experienced "shoefall" in Iraq! I am sure you would have seen that on TV. Else you can see it here.

Blogger's Postscript 2:
Dogs are up in arms again! Hurling shoes at President George Bush and becoming a hero with a couple of shoe-strokes is one thing. But this Iraqi journalist, Muntazer Al-Zaidi, saying "It is the farewell kiss, you dog" is quite another! Canines cant take such insults anymore! Apparently my previous post "Animal Qualms" needs wider publicity!