What do you think the word of the year should be? We'll find out what the American Dialect Society says soon.
However, on NPR Geoff Nunberg has his own ideas. It shouldn't be vuvuzela or webisode or guidette, he says, but it should be "no."
quote:
Sometimes "no" signals absence or nonexistence, and you can come up with a nice collage of the year's preoccupations by enumerating all of the things that were in short supply. At one point or another, 2010 has been the year of no eggs, no fishing or swimming — at least in the Gulf — no campaign spending limits and no ice at the North Pole. It's the year of no more narcissism, which will no longer be recognized as a diagnosis in the official psychiatric manual. And thanks to a legislative anomaly, it was the year of no estate tax — before the tax kicks back up to its earlier level next year. That was a windfall for the heirs of the super-rich who died this year, though it does create an unfortunate incentive to do some discreet plug-pulling this New Year's Eve.
Make sense to me. Heck, NPR wrote 1,640 articles last year featuring the word "no."
I actually had a question about that. Certainly they weren't all about the word "no." Likely they were things like, "Obama says no to new taxes" or something.
