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Word of the Year: austerity
Source: Agencies |
December 21, 2010, Tuesday
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AS Greece faced a debt crisis, the government passed a series of strict austerity measures, including taxes hikes and cutting public sector pay.
The move sparked angry protests, strikes and riots across the country as unemployment skyrocketed and the crisis spread to other European nations. It also provoked a rush to online dictionaries from those searching for a definition.
Austerity, the 14th century noun defined as "the quality or state of being austere" and "enforced or extreme economy," set off enough searches that Merriam-Webster named it as its Word of the Year for 2010, the dictionary's editors announced yesterday.
Runners-up also announced yesterday included "pragmatic," "moratorium," "socialism," and "bigot" - the last word resulted from public uses by former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former CNN host Rick Sanchez and former American radio analyst Juan Williams.
Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster's editor-at-large, said this year's top 10 words were associated with a news event or coverage, which editors believe resulted in prolonged jumps in searches.
"Sometimes it's hard to pinpoint the searches on one particular news event, but typically that is what sparks people's curiosity in a word," Sokolowski said.
For example, "socialism" was searched, editors believe, because of coverage around federal bailouts and Democrat-backed federal -health care legislation.
John Morse, president and publisher of the dictionary, said the dictionary's online website sees more than 500 million searches a year - with most of those being words like "effect" and "affect." But he said words selected for the dictionary's top 10 were words that had hundreds of thousands of out-of-character hits.
Also making the top 10 list was the word "doppelganger." Sokolowski said the word saw a jump in searches after George Stephanopoulos of ABC's "Good Morning America" called "Eat, Pray, Love" author Elizabeth Gilbert "Julia Roberts' doppelganger." Roberts played Gilbert in the book's film adaptation and resembles the writer.
"Doppelganger" was also used in the popular television show "The Vampire Diaries."
"Sometimes, that's all it takes," Sokolowski said.
"Shellacking," "dissident," and "furtive" also made the list.
The move sparked angry protests, strikes and riots across the country as unemployment skyrocketed and the crisis spread to other European nations. It also provoked a rush to online dictionaries from those searching for a definition.
Austerity, the 14th century noun defined as "the quality or state of being austere" and "enforced or extreme economy," set off enough searches that Merriam-Webster named it as its Word of the Year for 2010, the dictionary's editors announced yesterday.
Runners-up also announced yesterday included "pragmatic," "moratorium," "socialism," and "bigot" - the last word resulted from public uses by former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former CNN host Rick Sanchez and former American radio analyst Juan Williams.
Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster's editor-at-large, said this year's top 10 words were associated with a news event or coverage, which editors believe resulted in prolonged jumps in searches.
"Sometimes it's hard to pinpoint the searches on one particular news event, but typically that is what sparks people's curiosity in a word," Sokolowski said.
For example, "socialism" was searched, editors believe, because of coverage around federal bailouts and Democrat-backed federal -health care legislation.
John Morse, president and publisher of the dictionary, said the dictionary's online website sees more than 500 million searches a year - with most of those being words like "effect" and "affect." But he said words selected for the dictionary's top 10 were words that had hundreds of thousands of out-of-character hits.
Also making the top 10 list was the word "doppelganger." Sokolowski said the word saw a jump in searches after George Stephanopoulos of ABC's "Good Morning America" called "Eat, Pray, Love" author Elizabeth Gilbert "Julia Roberts' doppelganger." Roberts played Gilbert in the book's film adaptation and resembles the writer.
"Doppelganger" was also used in the popular television show "The Vampire Diaries."
"Sometimes, that's all it takes," Sokolowski said.
"Shellacking," "dissident," and "furtive" also made the list.
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