American English Word of the Year (WOTY)

occupy

(from the Occupy Wall Street and other Occupy movements in Autumn 2010 to protest the political influence of corporations and the superwealthy)

pragmatic

(from the realistic point of view that people presumably want from politicians)

squeezed middle

(the middle class, who neither receive government assistance nor are wealthy enough to easily pay taxes [from British Labour Party leader Ed Miliband; also Oxford UK word])

FOMO

(anxiety from trying to keep up with social-media sites [acronym for Fear of Missing Out])

humblebrag

(a boast with which one pretends to express modesty)

2. ambivalence

(mixed feelings, including for the Republican Party candidates for the 2012 presidential state primaries)

3. insidious

Arab Spring

(Spring 2010 protests and revolutions in various Arab countries, including the ousting of leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya [term based on 1968 Prague Spring])

gamification

(using ideas from game design, such as points and awards, in other areas like advertising)

app

(short for [computer / online] application; computer program / software for a user task)

austerity

(from European government austerity measures)

refudiate

([probably confused] blend of refute and repudiate, from Sarah Palin's use on Twitter)

to trend

(to be a hot topic on Twitter, etc.)

nom

(onomatopoeia for enjoyable eating, often om nom nom)

2. pragmatic

3. moratorium

(legal delay of activity; from President Barak Obama's proposed drilling-permit moratorium after the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill)

retweet

(reposting what someone has posted [tweeted] on Twitter)

webisode

(episode of a video Web series or online video extra episode of a television series; blend of Web [clipping from World Wide Web] and episode)

tweet

(Twitter posting)

distracted driving

(from using digital devices)

admonish

(U.S. House of Representatives' proposed response to Rep. Joe Wilson's "You lie!" during President Barak Obama's speech of September 9, 2009)

unfriend

(deleting someone from a social-media friends list, as on Facebook)

a fail / fail!

(from online gamer usage)

twenty-ten

(year 2010)

cloud computing

(doing computer applications online instead of on one's computer)

wallet biopsy

(assessing a patient's ability to pay in recommending medical services)

2. emaciated

3. empathy

hashtag

("#" symbol used for Twitter topic marking)

sexting

(blend of sex[ual] and texting)

Twitter-related Word Clusters:
Twitterati, Twitterverse / Twittersphere, Retweet, etc.

Obamaism Word Clusters:
Obamanomics, Obamacracy, Obamalypse, etc.

bailout

(from U.S. financial-sector bailout)

overshare

(giving out too much personal information)

bailout

(from U.S. financial-sector bailout)

hypermiling

(trying to get extremely good gas mileage (mpg))

driving while texting (DWT)

shovel-ready

(easily started re: infrastructure projects)

leisure sickness

(hypothetical condition for people, such as workaholics, who tend to get sick during downtime, perhaps due to stress hormones)

selective ignorance

(specialization as a response to information overload by not reading every E-mail, news blog, etc. that you could)

2. to vet

(evaluate)

3. socialism

topless meeting

(business meeting that bans laptop computers, cellphones, and PDAs)

moofer

(short for Mobile Out of OFfice worker)

subprime

(as in subprime mortgage)

grass station

(a gas / petrol station for ethanol, perhaps made from switch grass)

w00t

(yay!; woot with zeros, as in leet [l33t] speak; possibly an acronym for We Owned the Other Team)

locavore

(eater of local foods; blend of local and herbivore / carnivore)

lolcat

(image macro: cat pictures with added captions using unconventional spelling / grammar; based on the online abbreviation LOL [Laugh Out Loud])

green-

(prefix for pro-environment, as in greenwashing)

freegan

(eater of disposed-of food; blend of free and vegan)

God particle

(hypothetical Higg's boson subatomic particle)

2. to facebook

(to use Facebook, to search for someone on Facebook, etc.)

3. conundrum

cougar

(older woman who goes after younger men romantically)

social graph

(friend network on Facebook, etc.)

plutoed

(demoted, à la Pluto from "planet" to "dwarf planet")

Crackberry

(addictive portable digital device or the addict; blend of crack [cocaine] and BlackBerry [PDA])

truthiness

(as used by Steven Colbert on Comedy Central's Colbert Report to mean preferring things that feel true to known facts)

carbon neutral

(goal of balancing carbon emissions and reductions / tree plantings)

to YouTube

(to record something to upload to Youtube, etc.)

climate canary

(sensitive organisms whose climate-related deaths portend trouble; based on "canary in the coal mine")

carbon footprint

(environmental impact of fossil fuels)

netroots

(online political / business marketing; blend of net [clipping from Internet] and grassroots)

2. to google

(to use a Web search engine, such as Google)

3. decider

(from President George W. Bush usage to describe his leadership)

funner

(regularization of the noun-turned-adjective fun [usually "more fun"])

DRM

(digital rights management)

truthiness

(as used by Steven Colbert on Comedy Central's Colbert Report to mean preferring things that feel true to known facts)

infosnacking

(brief periods of web surfing, personal E-mail, etc. at work)

integrity

podcast

(audio [and later also video] online show or blog that can be downloaded to computer or MP3 player, such as an iPod; blend of iPod and broadcast)

podcast

(audio [and later also video] online show or blog that can be downloaded to computer or MP3 player, such as an iPod; blend of iPod and broadcast)

lifehack

(way to make everyday task more efficient)

perfect storm

(popularized by Hurricane Katrina coverage)

portafuel

(somewhat healthier snack food for energy)

2. refugee

3. contempt

lifehack

(way to make everyday task more efficient)

squick

(cause revulsion)

red state, blue state, purple state

(U.S. states voting Republican, Democratic, and mixed, respectively)

adultescent

(immature-acting adult; blend of adult and adolescent [adult is from the past participle of Latin adolescere, to grow up, and adolescent is from the present participle])

blog

(short for weblog)

phish

(to get personal information, such as passwords, by sending E-mails pretending to be from a bank; alteration of to fish)

wardrobe malfunction

(unexpected public exposure of one's body; from Janet Jackson's 2004 Superbowl controversy)

shoppertainment

(experience provided by shopping malls with movie theaters, nightclubs, etc.; blend of shopping and entertainment)

nutraceutical

(dietary supplement, etc. that isn't regulated as tightly as drugs are; blend of nutrition and pharmaceutical)

2. incumbent

3. electoral

metrosexual

(fashion-conscious straight male; blend of metropolitan and heterosexual)

transparency

(giving the public access to information in government / business)

democracy

SARS

(short for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome)

to text

2. quagmire

(predicament; from the idea of getting stuck in a lengthy war in Iraq reminiscent of the Vietnam War)

3. quarantine

weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)

(hunted for in Iraq before and during the 2003 Iraq War)

job spill

(work done during usual free time)

blog

(clipping from weblog)

to google

(to use a Web search engine, such as Google)

9-11

(September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks)

tween

(preteen child approximately 8–12 years old; blend of teen and between)

second-hand speech

(overheard cellphone conversation)

facial profiling

(videotaping crowds to identify suspects; based on racial profiling)

chad

(piece punched out, or not totally so ["hanging chad"] of a voter card; from Florida 2000 U.S. presidential election recount)

senior moment

(episode of senior-citizen forgetfulness)

civil union

(same-sex marriage-like partnerships)

dot bomb

(failed dot-com company after the 1990s' dot-com boom)

Y2K

(year 2000; from Year 2 Kilo [thousand], as in kilobyte)

dot-com

(Internet-based company; from the fact that originally only commercial websites ended in .com)

cybersquat

(registering a useful Internet domain name to sell later, such as a brand name or a celebrity's name)

e-

(prefix for electronic, as in e-commerce)

e-

(prefix for electronic, as in e-commerce)

senior moment

(episode of senior-citizen forgetfulness)

multislacking

(doing one or more other tasks while working; based on the positive multitasking)

millennium bug

(defect of computer clocks treating "00" as the year 1900 instead of 2000 due to the memory-saving shortcut of using only two digits for years)

paparazzi

(aggressive freelance photographers that pursue celebrities; plural of paparazzo)

DVD

(digital versatile disc, later: digital video disc)

duh

(scornful exclamation to point out obviousness)

mom

(as in soccer mom and minivan mom)

shapeshifter

(a form-changing creature, a view-changing politician)

alpha geek

(the most technically / technologically proficient person at work; based on alpha male [as with wolves])

dot

(as in .com [dot com])

Tie:

World Wide Web

newt

(as in Newtspeak; from Newt Gingrich, who became the U.S. Speaker of the House after the Republicans gained a majority in the 1994 midterm elections and quickly launched bold changes)

E.Q.

(emotional quotient; based on I.Q. [intelligence quotient])

postal / go postal

(behaving violently from being disgruntled; from a number of workplace shootings by disgruntled U.S. Postal Service employees)

Tie:

cyber

(related to computers or the Internet, as in cyberspace)

to morph

(using CGI or traditional animation to change an image, such as changing one image into another by creating intermediate forms)

challenged

(used for showing undesired conditions, as in vertically challenged for "short")

to gingrich

(to behave like Newt Gingrich, who became the U.S. Speaker of the House after the Republicans gained a majority in the 1994 midterm elections and quickly launched bold changes)

Information Superhighway

(the Internet)

McJob

(boring, low-paying job)

quotative like

(said, as in "I was like 'What?' and he was like 'Aren't you listening?'")

Not!

(humorous delayed negation, as in "That's a good idea. Not!"; popularized by the movie Wayne's World)

grunge

(clothing style from the grunge music culture)

snail mail

(traditional mail, as opposed to E-mail)

mother of all

(translation of Saddam Hussein's Arabic "Um al-Mar'rik" ["Mother of All Battles"] for the start of the 1991 Persian Gulf War)

in your face

(confrontational)

rollerblade

(inline roller skate, from the brand name)

Bushlips

(hollow talk from a politician; from presidential candidate George H.W. Bush's 1988 promise of "Read my lips: No new taxes," eventually followed by "revenue enhancements" after he was elected)

politically correct (PC)

(concerned with, or thought overly concerned with, preventing offense to women and minority groups or fixing wrongs against them)

notebook PC

(laptop computer)

to google

(to use a Web search engine, such as Google)

blog

(short for weblog)

9/11

(September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks)

web

(World Wide Web)

jazz

she

(feminine personal pronoun, which ended similarity of old feminine and plural forms)

science