Technology drives the astounding pace of contemporary language change, so it’s hardly surprising that most landmark words today come out of tech. That and the fact that this industry is responsible for the production of 9/10s of the world’s neologisms.
No matter what, 2009’s top words came from tech. The American Dialect Society’s word of the decade is ‘google,’ and ‘tweet’ is the ADS’s word of the year.
“Both words are, in the end, products of the Information Age, where every person has the ability to satisfy curiosity and to broadcast to a select following, both via the Internet,” said Grant Barrett, chair of the New Words Committee at the American Dialect Society.
“I really thought blog would take the honors in the word of the decade category, but more people google than blog, don’t they?” Barrett said. “Plus, many people think ‘blog’ just sounds ugly. Maybe Google’s trademark lawyers would have preferred it, anyway.”
Posted from Press On
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