14 DAY TRIAL // If you thought that all those 'of the year' and 'of the decade' lists that flooded the web at the end of the year were over, think again. The renowned American Dialect Society has released the results of its 20th annual word of the year vote and the winner was rather predictable. 'Tweet,' the act of posting a short message on Twitter and the message itself, was voted word of 2009, not much of a surprise after all the use, and misuse, it got even in the mainstream media. The results for the entire decade are even more interesting, though equally unsurprising, 'google', the act of searching for something online using a search engine, predominantly Google.com, was chose as the word of the decade.
This may be just a way of capitalizing on the popularity of a new word of catchphrase, but the results do seem actually relevant. It's hard to argue with 'tweet' as word of the year with competitors like 'H1N1' (not exactly a word per se but apparently acceptable) or 'fail'. The 'word' 'Dracula sneeze' on the other hand should have taken the title on pure originality alone. It did win the coveted "most creative" award, so it got at least part of the recognition it so richly deserved.
It's probably even harder to argue with 'google', though the competition was significantly tougher with words like 'blog' and 'words' like '9/11' or 'war on terror'. Serious contenders were also innovative terms such as 'green' or 'text'. In the end, though, 'google' squashed its opponents as the company itself has been doing for a while now. The entire press release (PDF - view in Google Docs) does actually make for an amusing read.
The words do seem rather relevant at the moment and maybe they're here to stay. But seeing some of the past winners leads to some doubt of the lasting power of things like 'tweet'. In 1997, 'millenium bug' won the word of the year award and in 1999 the winner was 'Y2K'. And if that isn't convincing enough, in 1993 it was 'information superhighway'. The Prosecution rests.