Blog declared Word of the Year

Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary has announced that the word “blog” is their word of the year in their list of Top 10 words of the year.

The top ten list in order was:

  1. blog
  2. incumbent
  3. electoral
  4. insurgent
  5. hurricane
  6. cicada
  7. peloton
  8. partisan
  9. sovereignty
  10. defenestration

Reuters reports that the company said most online dictionary queries were for uncommon terms, but people also turned to its Web sites for words in news headlines.

"That is what occurred in this year's election cycle ... with voluminous hits for words like 'incumbent,' 'electoral,' 'partisan,' and, of course, our number one Word of the Year, 'blog'," Merriam-Webster President and Publisher John Morse said in a statement.

The dictionary has been criticized however for its definition of a blog on a blog news website, that described Merriam-Websters definition of a blog as a personal journal as "garbage" and "so 1999".

References

  1. Merriam-Webster's Words of the Year 2004
  2. Wiktionary