Google Tops 2007 Word Awards

The lexica is currently expanding and it's only natural, with the progress always comes change, no matter which level it is on. Words come out every day and the key to that is, as I see it, the huge numbers of people speaking the respective language that have direct access to new opportunities of approaching a specific domain (I'll have the beta testers in this category) or those who are faced with experiences never before encountered.

The 2007 Awards from the American Dialect Society have voted Googleg�nger, a couple of days ago, to be the winner in the "Most Creative" category, in its 18th Word of the Year event. It was also nominated for the Word of the Year, but it was outshined by "subprime".

The meaning of the word will probably not surprise you, it's a word that came as a direct result of what has been going on with the people surfing the Internet for quite a while now. You yourselves must have done this at least once: Google yourselves. Well, a Googleg�nger is a "person with your name who shows up when you Google yourself". Right time for it to be invented, too, with the rising trends of searching the Internet for mentions of you, your loved ones or those who you've recently met. But in the beginning, the term used to have a wider meaning, as MSNBC pointed out in October, last year. "Just as 'Googling' has become standard slang for 'searching online', the term 'Googleg�nger' has also caught on with a generation of young people defined not so much by their accomplishments but by how Google-able those accomplishments are. You are who you are because of Google. [�] For some, their Googleg�nger is a rival in a race to the top of the Google hit list. [�] For others, the Googleg�nger can be an object of curiosity, of comparison-an alter ego of sorts."

Surprisingly enough for such big a prize, Googling the new word will return only about three thousand results.