Watch These Words!

Each year Lake Superior State University picks words they'd like to see banned from the English language. Click here for the complete list, with usage.

I'd agree with quite a few:
Viral
Wow Factor (Should have been banned about 4 years ago, IMHO)
BFF (Hmmm. I kind of like this one, but overused? Probably.)
I'm just sayin'


There are more! And we could probably add some they haven't considered...
I'm thinking. (But I'm not just sayin'.)

Related posts: Words Each Day
Even More Words

Love at First Sight?

I truly never thought I'd say this, but I love my mobile device... 
And this article in today's New York Times, in the special Personal Tech section, kind of says it all. But I disagree with the writer at the end. I don't equate my IPhone with teenage love. I'm not planning to swap it for a new or completely different model in a year or two. In fact, it's a year old now, and I'm still devoted.

(Plus, I learned a new word. Even if it's one I may never use again, I like the look and the sound of CHAMFER...)

Snomageddon

Yesterday, the announcement came from the Global Language Monitor that a few new words slipped into usage. This doesn't actually make them official words, from what I understand. Just frequently-used, even if not always correctly.

None of my friends and family in the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan area will be surprised at two portmanteau words: Snowpocalypse and Snowmageddon.

(And while I'm writing- how about that fabulous word portmanteau?  Examples= smog, motel, brunch! I always loved that the original meaning was a large traveling case with two compartments.)

But back to Snowmageddon...

Hot off the press- Snowmageddon! Click for the complete article.

Here's hoping this winter brings minimal snow and lots of sunshine to my Mid-Atlantic family and former neighbors.

No more Snowpocalpses!

Even More on Words, New Words That Is...

No big surprises here.

According to the American Dialect Society, Google is the word of the
decade and tweet is the word of the year.
According to the Oxford University Press, the word of the year is unfriend.

And then there's the whole defriend vs. unfriend thing. Wow. What a way to stir the pot when it comes to picking popular words.

Here's a bit from the American Dialect Society's blog:

In its 20th annual words of the year vote, the American Dialect Society voted “tweet” (noun, a short message sent via the Twitter.com service, and verb, the act of sending such a message) as the word of the year and “ google” (a generic form of “Google,” meaning “to search the Internet) as its word of the decade.

And did you know that out of the million words available for our use, the average person's vocabulary is fewer than 14,000 words. That's straight from the folks who are tracking words like defriend and twitter. 14,000? That seems excessive. Then again, those are the Brits tracking words, so I'll take it with a grain of salt.



Related post: More on Words