In 1905, people were in love with a brand-new word: “Jellybean.”
In 1951, there was “rock and roll.” In 1962, “car pool.” In 1963, “Duh.”
In 1972, “Watergate.” In 1981, “wannabe.” In 1984, “yuppie.”
In 1994, “go postal.” In 1995, “World Wide Web.” And in 1996, “soccer moms.”
It may seem bizarre (or far-out, kooky, off-the-wall, way-out), but there actually is a group of professional linguists (or word geeks) who annually take the time and trouble to select the words that capture the zeitgeist (or spirit of the age) of the vocabularial (not really a word) times.
On Friday, about 50 of those people–the American Dialect Society–gathered in Chicago at a swanky (or really nice) downtown hotel to place their fingers firmly on the pulse of American jargon and announce their picks for word of the year, word of the decade, word of the century, and word of the millennium.
“These are solemn choices,” said Allan Metcalf, the executive secretary of the ADS.
Metcalf’s enraptured audience–self-professed word nerds from all over the country–nodded along. A few giggled.
In the front row was the founder of Punctuation.com.
Then there was the guy who flew in from England for the occasion, taking a few days off from his high-ranking job at Oxford English Dictionary.
And there was an English professor from the University of Wisconsin who felt so moved by the grammatical moment that she stood up to publicly declare, “Come on, people. Let’s vote for pronouns. I love pronouns. There’s nothing like a pronoun!”
The group started by voting for potential words of the year. “Pokemania,” “dot-com,” “cybersquat” and “millennium fatigue” all got nominated, and several people made moving speeches in favor of each. But the simple, three-character thriller, “Y2K,” took the honors.
Then the single word “Web,” by overwhelming majority, was chosen to be the word of the 1990s.
Next, “jazz,” both because it was coined in the 1900s and because it simply “feels nice on the tongue,” was chosen as word of the century.
And the word of the millennium . . . well, that’s a long, complicated story. Stay tuned for the answer to that one.
Why do these people do this?
“We love words,” said Metcalf. “It’s that simple.”
The love of words is no new phenomenon. The American Dialect Society has existed since 1889, but it didn’t start voting on “words of the year” until 1990. But Metcalf, a professor at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Ill., and his linguistics buddy, David Barnhart, a professor at Georgia College & State University, recently have gone back and retroactively denoted words for each year since 1900, when the word of the year was “phony.”
The two made their picks by combing records and finding words that became a fixture of the time.
The ADS is an exclusive kind of group, no doubt. Members tell dictionary jokes. They argue about what year the word “the” first appeared. They read encyclopedias for fun.
They take their jobs so seriously that they not only determine the word of the year, they often go a few steps further. Consider their selections from 1998:
Word of the year: the prefix “e,” as in e-mail, e-commerce and e-trading.
Word least likely to succeed: “compfusion,” as in confusion over computers.
Most original: “multislacking,” as in playing at the computer when one should actually be working.
Most euphemistic: “senior moment,” as in having a momentary lapse of memory due to age.
Many of the ADS’ former “words of the year” have become such integral parts of American dialect that most people can barely remember a time when the jargon didn’t exist.
Such as “teddy bear,” word of the year in 1906.
Or “athlete’s foot,” word of the year in 1928.
Or “teenager,” from 1938; “showbiz,” from 1945; “role model,” from 1957; “affirmative action,” from 1965; “couch potato,” from 1976; “virtual reality,” from 1989; and “Ebonics,” from 1997.
So with all these words to choose from, the word of the millennium was bound to be highbrow (1903). It would certainly cut the mustard (1904). It would so far surpass normalcy (1920) that it would stop the media (1921) and even the rocket scientists (1985) in their tracks, making everyone except loony tunes (1977) agree how cool (1949) and groovy (1937) it was.
But some might say the word of the millennium turned out to be a ripoff (1967).
“Science,” those seven letters that have changed society, only got a smattering of votes.
“Truth” and “justice” barely got a nod.
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Instead, the word of the millennium (kudos to Professor Susan Burt who stood up and professed her love for a pronoun) was . . . “she.”
“Not!” you might protest, but only if it were 1992.
The rationale for the vote is an English lesson unto itself. But in a nutshell, the explanation goes something like this: In old English (way back in the 500s), the same pronoun was used to refer to both a group of people or one female. “She” first appeared somewhere after 1000, from where or how no one can agree, but it simplified and clarified the English language considerably.
The language experts also took a small swipe at their host city.
The panel named “Milly,” Mayor Richard Daley’s name for his flop of a millennium dance, the “most unnecessary word of the year.”
THE WORDS OF THE CENTURY
Two members of the American Dialect Society, David K. Barnhart and Allan A. Metcalf, have selected a word or phrase per year for the 20th Century, matching the word with the year when it came into its own. The list appears in their book “America in So Many Words” (Houghton Mifflin, 1997 & 1999)
1900: phony
1901: grass roots
1902: goo
1903: highbrow
1904: cut the mustard
1905: jellybean
1906: muckraker/teddy bear
1907: melting pot
1908: asleep at the switch
1909: pork barrel
1910: barbershop
1911: blues
1912: movies
1913: jazz
1914: backpack
1915: flapper
1916: IQ
1917: GI
1918: D Day
1919: T shirt
1920: normalcy
1921: media
1922: cold turkey
1923: hijack
1924: brainstorm
1925: motel
1926: Bible Belt
1927: macho
1928: athlete’s foot
1929: jalopy
1930: bulldozer
1931: Skid Row
1932: hopefully
1933: supermarket
1934: whistlestop
1935: boondoggle
1936: streamline
1937: groovy
1938: teenager
1939: juke box
1940: jeep
1941: multicultural
1942: gizmo
1943: acronym
1944: snafu
1945: showbiz
1946: Iron Curtain/Cold War
1947: babysit
1948: cybernetics
1949: cool
1950: DJ
1951: rock and roll
1952: Ms.
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1953: UFO
1954: fast food
1955: hotline
1956: brinkmanship
1957: role model
1958: Murphy’s Law
1959: software
1960: sit-in
1961: biodegradable
1962: car pool
1963: duh
1964: swing voter
1965: affirmative action
1966: credibility gap
1967: ripoff
1968: aerobics
1969: sexism and ageism
1970: bottom line
1971: workaholic
1972: Watergate
1973: sound bite
1974: streak
1975: substance
1976: couch potato
1977: loony tunes
1978: geek
1979: stealth
1980: gridlock
1981: wannabe
1982: like
1983: greenmail
1984: yuppie
1985: rocket scientist
1986: dis
1987: codependency
1988: push the envelope
1989: virtual reality
1990: PC
1991: about
1992: Not!
1993: newbie
1994: go postal
1995: Newt/World Wide Web
1996: soccer mom
1997: Ebonics
1998: millennium bug
1999: Y2K