More Words of the Year:

From the American Dialect Society

The Word of the Year is "tweet" 

(a short message sent via the Twitter.com service, and the act of sending such a message) 

The word of the decade is "google" 

(a generic form of the trade name Google, meaning "to search the Internet", which Google's trademark  lawyers will wince to read). 

The thematic winners were: 

Most Useful:

"fail" 

(An interjection uttered when something is egregiously unsuccessful); 

Most Creative

"Dracula sneeze" 

(covering one's mouth with the crook of one's elbow when sneezing, seen as similar to popular portrayals of the vampire Dracula, in which he hides the lower half of his face with a cape); 

Most Unnecessary

"sea kittens" 

(fish, according to PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who have been running a campaign arguing that if fish were called sea kittens, people would be less likely to hurt them); 

Most Outrageous

"death panel" 

(a scare phrase from the recent US controversy over health plans, a supposed committee of doctors or bureaucrats who would decide which patients were allowed to receive treatment, ostensibly leaving the rest to die); 

Most Euphemistic

"hike the Appalachian trail" 

(to go somewhere to have sex with one's illicit lover, which follows a statement by the Governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, who said he was going hiking when he really went to 

Argentina to visit his mistress); 

Most Likely to Succeed

"twenty-ten" 

(a pronunciation of the year 2010, as opposed to saying "two thousand ten" or "two thousand and ten"). The words deemed least likely to succeed were any names of the decade 2000-2009, such as Naughties, Aughties or Oughties.

 

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