Word of the Decade Candidates

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett.

Martha, when I look back over the last 10 years or so, I can see a lot of new English.

For me, all of this new language, this new English, illustrates the major themes that we’ve been living with.

For example, 10 years ago, did you Google anything?

Maybe you Yahoo’d it or Alta Vista’d it.

Yeah, I think I dogpiled it.

You dogpiled it.

There we go. And 10 years ago, did you know what a hanging chad was?

I had no idea. I would have guessed it was some kind of fruit or something.

I mean, there were a lot of terms that came out of the big fiasco of the 2000 presidential election.

But I think hanging chad is kind of a great emblem for that whole big mess, don’t you?

Yeah, yeah. That sums it up right there.

And how about this? How about social networking?

Now, that’s a new one. I mean, yeah.

Friendster, Facebook, MySpace.

Well, that stuff really was not on anybody’s radar at the time, or at least nobody.

Most of us didn’t know about Facebook.

It didn’t exist, right?

Right.

And I remember when those nouns started to become verbs and how striking that was at the time.

That’s a true sign that a word has been adopted into the language.

And if it takes 10 years to do it, we can look back retrospectively and say, you know,

Google’s probably going to stick around for a little while longer, right, as a verb?

A verb with a small g.

It’s like the Xerox of our decade.

Yes.

Well, we invite you to submit your words of the decade to us.

Let us know the language that you think characterized the last 10 years.

What is the one word or few words, the phrase that really encapsulates the feelings, the passions, the emotions,

The trends of politics or technology or even war or culture?

Let us know.

Send an email to words@waywordradio.org or send it to us on Twitter at the username Wayword.