American Dialect Society
The American Dialect Society, founded in 1889, is a learned society "dedicated to the study of the English language in North America, and of other languages, or dialects of other languages, influencing it or influenced by it."[1] The Society publishes the academic journal, American Speech.
Word of the year
Since 1991, the American Dialect Society has designated one or more words to be the word of the year, the year's most important word or expression in public discussion. They include:
- 1990: bushlips (similar to "bullshit" – stemming from President George H.W. Bush's 1988 "Read my lips: no new taxes" broken promise)
- 1991: mother of all (as in Saddam Hussein's foretold "Mother of all battles")
- 1992: Not! (meaning "just kidding")
- 1993: information superhighway
- 1994: cyber, morph (to change form)
- 1995: Web and (to) newt (to act aggressively as a newcomer)
- 1996: mom (as in "soccer mom")
- 1997: millennium bug
- 1998: e- (as in "e-mail")
- 1999: Y2K
- 2000: chad (from the 2000 Presidential Election controversy in Florida)
- 2001: 9-11 [2]
- 2002: weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) [3]
- 2003: metrosexual [4]
- 2004: red state, blue state, purple state (from the 2004 presidential election) [5]
- 2005: truthiness, popularized on The Colbert Report [6]
- 2006: plutoed (demoted or devalued, as happened to the former planet Pluto) [7]
The society also selects words in other categories that vary from year to year, such as most original, most unnecessary, most outrageous, and most likely to succeed.
External links
 | This linguistics article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |