2009: An unfriendly year?
The New Oxford American Dictionary recently chose its word of the year. And what new word summed up the final year of this nameless decade? Unfriend. Fitting, no? The competition was stiff as the short list included a number of beloved words from technology and economics, such as ‘hashtag’, ‘intexticated’, ‘freemium’, and (a personal favorite) ‘zombie bank’.
So what about the word of the decade? Well, the Global Language Monitor (which, incidentally, now has the number of English words past the 1,000,000 mark) says the term ‘global warming’ was the most popular word of the decade. Apparently, ‘climate change’ was the ‘Top Phrase of the Decade’, which strikes me as odd since ‘global warming’ is also a phrase. But whatever. It’s all about the truthiness.
