You may recall that last year we selected a rare word, a tongue-twister of sorts, as the 2011 Word of the Year: tergiversate which means “to change repeatedly one’s attitude or opinions with respect to a cause, subject, etc.; equivocate.” Rather than pick a word that rose to prominence through common usage during the year (like Occupy or Arab Spring), we selected a word hidden …
There are essentially two ways to pick a “word of the year.” One common approach is to select from words whose common usage reflects some quality of the year past. Expect to see occupy, winning, etc., on many selections this December. Another way involves actually using the dictionary. Is there a word that captures the character of 2011, regardless of its popularity or ubiquity? In …
After hours of calculation, deliberation, and lexical prestidigitation, we are pleased to reveal our selection for the 2010 Word of the Year. In 2010, millions of people visited Dictionary.com to learn the right spelling, pronunciation, or definition of millions of words. Our Word of the Year directly reflects the hard work of our users—a word that experienced a surge of look-ups in the past 12 months. …