For the Top Words of the Entire 21st Century, (2000-2020) see below or go here.
For more information on the Top Words for the individual years, go here.
For more information on the Top Words of 2009, go here.
“Global Warming,” “9/11″ and “Obama” are Top Words,
“Climate Change” is top phrase,
“Heroes” is top name
Austin, TX November 19, 2009 – The Global Language Monitor has announced the Top Words of the Decade, as part of its annual global survey of the English language. The Top Words were ‘Global Warming’, 9/11, and Obama followed by Bailout, Evacuee, and Derivative; Google, Surge, Chinglish, and Tsunami followed. “Climate Change” was the top phrase, while “Heroes” was the top name; bin-Laden was No. 2.
“Looking at the first decade of the 21st century in words is a sober, even somber, event.” said Paul JJ Payack, President of The Global Language Monitor.“For a decade that began with such joy and hope, the words chosen depict a far more complicated and in many ways, tragic time. Nevertheless, signs of hope and renewal can be found in the overall lists.”
The words are culled from throughout the English-speaking world, which now numbers more than 1.58 billion speakers. Since GLM’s survey encompassed the years 2000 - 2009, the expanded lists included 25 Top Words, and 20 Top Phrases and 20 Top Names.
Read the the story in the London Telegraph
Read the story in the Vancouver Sun
Each List contains the word, phrase or name in numerical order and the year when the word, phrase or name came to prominence. For example, the word ‘quagmire’ is hundreds of years old but it came into renewed prominence in 2004, about a year after the beginning of the Iraq War.
The Top Words of the Decade from 2000 – 2009
Word (Year) Comments
1. Global Warming (2000) Rated highly from Day One of the decade
2. 9/11 (2001) Another inauspicious start to the decade
3. Obama- (2008 )The US President’s name as a ‘root’ word or ‘word stem’
4. Bailout (2008) The Bank Bailout was but Act One of the crisis
5. Evacuee/refugee (2005) After Katrina, refugees became evacuees
6. Derivative (2007) Financial instrument or analytical tool that engendered the Meltdown
7. Google (2007) Founders misspelled actual word ‘googol’
8. Surge (2007) The strategy that effectively ended the Iraq War
9. Chinglish (2005) The Chinese-English Hybrid language growing larger as Chinese influence expands
10. Tsunami (2004) Southeast Asian Tsunami took 250,000 lives
11. H1N1 (2009) More commonly known as Swine Flu
12. Subprime ( 2007) Subprime mortgages were another bubble to burst
13. dot.com (2000) The Dot.com bubble engendered no lifelines, no bailouts
14. Y2K ( 2000) The Year 2000: all computers would turn to pumpkins at the strike of midnight
15. Misunderestimate (2002) One of the first and most enduring of Bushisms
16. Chad ( 2000) Those Florida voter punch card fragments that the presidency would turn aupon
17. Twitter (2008 ) A quarter of a billion references on Google
18. WMD (2002) Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction
19. Blog (2003) First called ‘web logs’ which contracted into blogs
20. Texting (2004) Sending 140 character text messages over cell phones
21. Slumdog (2008) Child inhabitants of Mumba’s slums
22. Sustainable (2006) The key to ‘Green’ living where natural resources are never depleted
23. Brokeback (2004) New term for ‘gay’ from he Hollywood film ‘Brokeback Mountain’
24. Quagmire (2004) Would Iraq War end up like Vietnam, another ‘quagmire’?
25. Truthiness (2006) Steven Colbert’s addition to the language appears to be a keeper
Also worth noting: ’Embedded’ (2003) to embed reporters with US Troops .The Top Phrases of the Decade from 2000 – 2009
Word (Year) Comments
1. Climate Change (2000) Green words in every form dominant the decade
2. Financial Tsunami (2008) One quarter of the world’s wealth vanishes seemingly overnight
3. Ground Zero (2001) Site of 9/11terrorist attack in New York City
4. War on Terror (2001) Bush administration’s response to 9/11
5. Weapons of Mass Destruction (2003) Bush’s WMDs never found in Iraq or the Syrian desert
6. Swine Flu (2008) H1N1, please, so as not to offend the pork industry or religious sensitivities!
7. “Let’s Roll!” (2001) Todd Beamer’s last words before Flight 93 crashed into the PA countryside
8. Red State/Blue State (2004) Republican or Democratic control of states
9. Carbon footprint (2007) How much CO² does an activity produce?
10. Shock-and-awe (2003) Initial strategy of Iraq War
11. Ponzi Scheme (2009) Madoff’s strategy reaped billions & heartache
12. Category Four (2005) Force of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans’ seawalls and levies
13. King of Pop (2000) Elvis was the King, MJ the King (of Pop)
14. “Stay the Course” (2004) Dubya’s off-stated guidance for Iraq War
15. “Yes, we can!” (2008) Obama’s winning campaign slogan
16. “Jai Ho!” (2008) Shout of joy from ‘Slumdog Millionaire’
17. “Out of the Mainstream” (2003) Complaint about any opposition’s political platform
18. Cloud computing (2007) Using the Internet as a large computational device
19. Threat Fatigue (2004) One too many terrorist threat alerts
20. Same-sex marriage (2003) Marriage of gay couples
.The Top Names of the Decade from 2000 – 2009
Name (Year) Comment
1. Heroes (2001) Emergency responders who rushed into the Towers
2. bin Laden (2001) His Capture still top of mind for US Military
3. Ground Zero (2001) NY Times still will not capitalize the site as a formal name
4. Dubya (2000) George W. Bush, US President No. 43
5. The Clintons (Hillary & Bill) (2000) Looming on political landscape, though not as large
6. John Paul II (2000) Largest funeral in TV history attested to power
7.Obama(2008) Making an impact as the decade ends
8. Taliban (2000) Still the source of Afghan insurgency
9. Katrina (2004) Hurricane whose destruction of New Orleans is seared into minds around globe
10. Tiger Woods (2000) Top golfer earned about $1 Billion this decade
11. iPhone (2007) First product on this list
12. Paul Hewson (Bono) (2000) U2 Front man, NY Times Columnist, catalyst for African relief
13. Michael Jackson (2000) The King of Pop
14. Al Gore (2000) Nobel Prize winner, US Vice President, Climate Change purveyor
15.Saddham Hussein (2000) Iraqi dictator captured while hiding in a ‘spider hole’
16. Enron (2001) Seems like another era since this giant fell
17. Bollywood (2000) Mumbai’s answer to Hollywood
18. Facebook (2007) Another ubiquitous software product
19. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005) Iranian president since 2005
20. Vladimir Putin (2000) Russian leader since 2000
Also worth noting: ’Wikipedia’ (2006) The user-generated compendium of all knowledge .The analysis was completed on November 16th using GLM’s Predictive Quantities Indicator (PQI), the proprietary algorithm that tracks words and phrases in the media and on the Internet, now including blogs and social media (such as Twitter). The words are tracked in relation to frequency, contextual usage and appearance in global media outlets, factoring in long-term trends, short-term changes, momentum and velocity.
About The Global Language Monitor
Austin-Texas-based Global Language Monitor analyzes and catalogues the latest trends in word usage and word choices, and their impact on the various aspects of culture, with a particular emphasis upon Global English.
For more information, call 1.737.215.7750, email info@GlobalLanguageMonitor.com, or visit www.LanguageMonitor.com.
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This is the twentieth consecutive survey since the turn of the century that Global Language Monitor has tracked the Word of the Year.
- Woke (5) — An epiphany-like experience, where one is awakened to the call of social justice.
- Consequential — Presidents are now judged on the ‘consequentiality’ of their administrations.
- Migrants (16) — The continuing worldwide movement of mass migrations.
- Opioids (3) — The scourge continues as the nation seems a bit inured to the devastation (more casualties than all deaths in U.S. Wars from WWII to present).
- Collusion (11) — The report is filed and final, but the controversies continue.
- Anthropocene — Did a new human-influenced geological epoch actually begin in 1950?
- Heartbeat — Fetal heartbeat bills are now front-and-center in state legislatures across the nation.
- Blue Wave — The Democrats winning back control of Congress in the 2018 Mid-terms.
- Family Separation (6) — Family detention and separations actually began in 2014. This is a grave and intractable matter, with plenty of blame to spread around.
- Trade War (7) — As we first noted in 2009, “The Rise of China” is a geopolitical event of the first order with the seismic shockwaves continuing to echo around the world.
- Fake News (8) — Packaged news, planted sources, one-sided exposes, party lines, and official narratives are a new phenomenon only to those with no sense of history.
- Climate Change — 8,000 years ago, New York City was under a mile of ice.
- The Moment (1) — A confluence of fame, fortune, and happenstance.
- Nukes (4) — Last year North Korea and in 2019 Iran and Russia added to the mix.
- Progressives — The word ‘liberal’ outlived its usefulness as the description of one’s political leanings.
- Micro-influencers — Bloggers, Vloggers, Instagrammers, YouTubers, and other small yet very influential communities of interest.
- Fact Check (17) — New studies suggest that fact-checkers appear to have definite biases.
- ICE — The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency under the Department of Homeland Security.
- Women’s World Cup — The quadrennial, global celebration of women’s football.
- Gerrymander — The divvying up the political spoils (election districts) to the advantage of those in power.
Global Language Monitor has also released the Top Trending Words/Phrases of the Year for 2019 related to the call of social justice ranked to date, including last year’s ranking (number after the word) and a brief description or commentary.
- Identity Politics — - Tip O’Neill once famously opined that “all politics IS local”; nowadays it this has been updated to “all politics IS Identity”.
- They/Them — A variation of He/She.
- Fetal Heartbeat — - The center of a movement in many states to prove fetal viability.
- Woke — - The Great Awokening, etc.
- MeToo — - The #MeToo movement continues to wend itself into global culture.
- Cisgender — Those identifying with their assigned birth gender.
- Cultural Appropriation — One group, say white, female college students, adopting popular fashion styles of a minority group. (At one time considered a great compliment.)
- Intersectionality — According to Oxford, “The interconnected nature of social categorizations creating overlapping systems of discrimination”.
- Microaggression — Comments, looks, and gestures that communicate prejudicial slights, often unintentional.
- White Privilege — Societal benefits accrued to whites, by benefit of their cultural heritage. (In other cultures privilege often extends to other cultural groups.)
Based in Austin, Texas, the Global Language Monitor collectively documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language usage worldwide, with a particular emphasis upon the English language. The company is known for its Word of the Year, political analysis, college and university rankings, high-tech buzzwords, and media analytics. For more information, visit Languagemonitor.com.
Media Contact: Paul JJ Payack info@languagemonitor.com Related Images google-ngram-showing-the-rise-of.png Google Ngram showing the rise of “Woke” Woke, the Top Trending Word of 2019 for Global English thus far has dramatically risen in U.S. during the last decade as shown in the Google Ngram graph.google-ngram-showing-the-decline.png Google Ngram showing the decline of “Progress” Progress, the Top Un-trending Word Decliner for 2019, has significantly fallen, especially since the mid-1960s as shown in the Google Ngram.
SOURCE The Global Language Monitor
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