The Texas-based Global Language Monitor has gathered the Top 10 words at the end of each year since 2000, according to citations in the media and on the Internet from throughout the English-speaking world.
This year they also projected the Top Words of 2011 which listed below:-
Projected Top Words of 2011
1. Twenty-Eleven – The English-speaking world has finally agreed on a common designation for the year: Twenty-eleven far outstrips ‘two thousand eleven’ in the spoken language. This is welcome relief from the decade-long confusion over how to pronounce 2001, 2001, 2003, etc.
2. Obama-mess – David Letterman’s neologism for 2010 also works for 2011. This word is neutral. If Obama regain his magic, he escaped his Obama-mess; if his rating sinks further he continues to be engulfed by it.
3. Great Recession – Even the best case scenario has the economy digging out of this hole for the foreseeable future,
4. Palinism – Because the media needs an heir to Bushisms and Sarah Palin is the candidate of choice here.
5. TwitFlocker – Can’t say what the name of the next Twitter or Facebook will be, so we’ll use TwitFlocker as the place holder.
6. 3.0 – 2.0 has settled into the vocabulary in a thousand differing forms — Obama 2.0, Web 2.0, Lindsey Lohan 2.0, so we project 3.0 being used to ‘one-up’ the 2.0 trend.
7. 9/11 – Next September is the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on US soil, so there is sure to be a great resurgence in use of the phrase.
8. Climate Change (or global warming) – Both of these phrases have been in the Top Ten for the last decade, so we see no reason the English-speaking public will abandon either or both of the phrases.
9. China/Chinese – The emergence of China is the Top Story of the Decade and there is little indication that is emergence on the world stage will continue in the media.
10. Hobbit and/or Parseltongue – The blockbuster movies of 2011 will be sure to include Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 and the Hobbit (though the Hobbit premiers on Dec. 31) are sure to spin out some word or phrase that will remain memorable to the Earthly-audience.
Source: www.languagemonitor.com
