Words we’ve lived by

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This article was published 02/12/2009 (5814 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“Global warming” is the phrase of the decade, according to the Global Lan­guage Monitor, as the term weighed heavily over both international political discourse and helped popularize the green movement.

The list of the Top 25 words contains a number that reflect the decade’s challenges and tragedies — 9/11, bailout, and evacuee/refugee are all in the top five — and the increasingly connected lives we lead (Google, blog, Twitter, texting).

Followers of the evolution of English shouldn’t be surprised that technology is so well-represented on the list. In June, the Austin, Texas-based company deemed the one-millionth word in the language to be "Web 2.0."

Other notables on the list, such as Chinglish (the growing English-Chinese hybrid language), Slumdog (referring to slum-dwellers in Mumbai, popularized by the film Slumdog Millionaire) and tsunami, point to a world increasingly aware of developing nations such as China and India.

"Obama" was third on the list, but, inevitably, former U.S. president George W. Bush left a bigger mark. One of his more famous malapropisms, misunderestimate, came in at No. 15, while WMD (weapons of mass destruction) took No. 18.

"Looking at the first decade of the 21st century in words is a sober, even sombre, event," Paul J.J. Payack, the company’s president, said in a release. "For a decade that began with such joy and hope, the words chosen depict a far more complicated and in many ways, tragic time."

The 18th-century writer Samuel Johnson wrote it’s laughable for a lexicographer to "imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language and secure it from corruption and decay." Paul Keen, director of Carleton University’s English department, agreed, saying the list "really proves just how alive language really is."

 

–Canwest News Service

 

 

Top words of the decade

1. Global Warming (2000) — rated highly from Day 1 of the decade

2. 9/11 (2001) — terror attacks in U.S.

3. Obama (2008) — U.S. president’s name

4. Bailout (2008) — bank aid Act 1 of crisis

5. Evacuee/refugee (2005) — after hurricane Katrina, refugees became evacuees

6. Derivative (2007) — financial instrument that engendered the meltdown

7. Google (2007) — founders misspelled actual word ‘googol’

8. Surge (2007) — the strategy that effectively ended the Iraq war

9. Chinglish (2005) — the Chinese-English hybrid language growing larger

10. Tsunami (2004) — the southeast Asian tsunami took 250,000 lives

11. H1N1 (2009) — also known as swine flu

12. Subprime (2007) — subprime mortgages were another bubble to burst

13. dot.com (2000) — the dot.com bubble engendered no lifelines, no bailouts

14. Y2K (2000) — the Year 2000

15. Misunderestimate (2002) — one of the first and most enduring of Bushisms

16. Chad (2000) — Florida voter punch card fragments the presidency would turn upon

17. Twitter (2008) — a quarter of a billion references on Google

18. WMD (2002) — Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction

19. Blog (2003) — first called ‘web logs,’

20. Texting (2004) — sending messages over cellphones

21. Slumdog (2008) — children of Mumbai’s slums

22. Sustainable (2006) — ‘green’ living in which natural resources are never depleted

23. Brokeback (2004) — term for ‘gay’ from film Brokeback Mountain

24. Quagmire (2004) — would the Iraq war end up like Vietnam, another quagmire?

25. Truthiness (2006) — Steven Colbert’s phrase appears to be a keeper