Mirriam Webster Inc. has announced its top ten words of the year for 2013. This year's list was compiled by analyzing the lookups in the online dictionary at Mirriam-Webster.com, focusing on the word with the greatest increase in lookups.
The purpose of the poll is to see what you think. I,and the article citing it, was surprised. Of course, if people have read about it already, I am presuming they wouldn't vote.
By the way, I thought of another good word of the year - at least for the US: cloture Can't say I've heard that used as much as I have this year!
From an ABC news report about annoying words of the year:
A Michigan university has issued its annual list of annoying words.
"Selfie," a term that describes a self-taken photo, often from a smartphone, led the way among the more than 2,000 nominations submitted to Lake Superior State University's 39th annual batch of words to banish due to overuse, overreliance and overall fatigue.
"Twerk" or "twerking," a sexually provocative way of dancing, found a dominant.
"Hashtag" refers to a word or phrase with no spaces preceded by the pound sign on the microblogging website Twitter.
Others on the banned list include "Twittersphere," ''t-bone," ''Obamacare" ''intellectually/morally bankrupt" and anything "on steroids." People also tired of the suffixes "-pocalypse" and "-ageddon" used to make words such as "snow-pocalypse" or "ice-ageddon."
And enough already with "Mr. Mom," a reference to fathers who take care of kids.
"Adversity" and "fan base" — terms often used when discussing sports — got booed.
Perhaps in the sports realm, there should be a test before former athletes get hired to do color commentary. During the recent football season, one announcer constantly mentioned how a powerful back "drug" his opponents downfield.
