American Dialect Society’s Word of the Year: ‘App’

“According to the American Dialect Society, which is holding its annual meeting at the Wyndham Grand in Pittsburgh this week, the Word of the Year that bests sums up 2010 is: ‘app,'” Sean D. Hamill reports for The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “‘It isn’t peer-reviewed, but we do put thought into it,’ said Mr. Sheidlower, who Tweeted about the WOTY selection Thursday and Friday. ‘If you look through the list of previous years, you’ll find, on the whole, they said something about the year.'”

“For example, last year’s selection for 2009 was ‘tweet’; 2008’s choice was ‘subprime’; and 2007 was ‘bailout,'” Hamill reports. There are several other prominent organizations that choose their own Word of the Year, such as Merriam-Webster, which already chose ‘austerity’ as its word in 2010, and the New Oxford American Dictionary, which chose “refudiate.”

Hamill reports, “But the dialect society has been choosing its WOTY, as it’s known among its voting members, the longest, since 1990…”

Read more in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “James W.” for the heads up.]