Zeitgeist
The American American Dialect Society (ADS) has just published it’s “Word Of The Decade” (http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/01/11/google-beats-twitter-for-word-of-the-decade-2/). Their decision is apparently “Google”. (The word of the year was “Tweet”).
They specify, interestingly, that they refer to the verb of “Googling” rather than the noun.
Trying to find a zeitgeist capturing word for the decade is a game that I’ve been playing with chums for a little while in lead up to the new year. We’ve widened the game into finding decade defining words for the last few as well.
My votes were:
60’s – Monochrome
70’s – Colour
80’s – Greed
90’s – Excess
00’s – Technology
Some of my chums votes for the noughties included “Terrorism”, “Internet”, “Y2K” and interestingly, “Recession” (how quickly ones perception is changed due to economic hardship. As we know, the vast majority of the decade was spent in a period of almost unprecedented growth).
As far as an idea for “Word Of The Year”?
‘Malaise’, obviously.
