“The first fifteen years of the 20th c. set the trajectory for the remainder of the century — and beyond.”  said Paul JJ Payack, president and Chief Word Analyst, the Global Language Monitor.  “This included the seeds of World War, Bolshevism, Communism, German Nationalism, the carving up of the Middle East without regard to societal structures, total warfare, the introduction of weapons of mass destruction, flight, electrification of rural areas, the internal combustion engine, the dependence on hydrocarbon for fuel, Einstein’s first papers on relativity, the arms race, the explosive growth of cities, and so much more.

If the same can be said for the 21st century at the 15-year mark, what trends can we see that will be likely shape the rest of the 21st century, into the 22nd — and possibly beyond.”

The results for the First 15 Years of 21st Century & the Trends They Portend follow in the format of Rank, Word or Phrase, Comment, and Trend.They Portend

Top Words for the First 15 Years of 21st Century & the Trends They Portend
Rank	Word or Phrase	Comment	21st Century Trend
1	Web/Internet (2000)	Some argue the most momentous change to human society since the Renaissance — also reflected in language usage	Some argue the most momentous change to human society since the Renaissance. Web 2.0 was the tipping point where the Internet became embedded into everyday life.
2	China (2009)	2015 is the year that China surpasses the US as the Earth’s economic engine in terms of PPE.  If China holds the title for as long as the US, it will be the year 2139 before it turns over the reigns.	The Rise of China will dominate 21st century geopolitical affairs like US in the 20th
3	Selfie (2013)	Evidently an ego-manical madness gripped the world in 2013-14.	The more people populate the planet, the greater the focus on the individual.
4	404 (2013)	The near-universal numeric code for failure on the global Internet.	404 will not merely signify the loss of an individual connection but the shutdown of whole sectors of society
5	9/11 (2001)	An inauspicious start to the 21st Century.	The early 20th c. saw the seeds of Bolshevism, German Nationalism, and Fascism.  The seeds thus planted in the 21st c. are equally foreboding
6	OMG (2008)	One of the first texting expressions (Oh my God!), another was BFF as in Best Friend Forever	First sign that the Internet would change language. Basically the successor to Morse’s ‘What hath God Wrought?
7	Sustainable (’06)	The key to ‘Green’ living where natural resources are wisely conserved and thus never depleted.	Made small impact in 2006; its importance grows every year and will continue to do so as resources ARE depleted.
8	Hella (2008)	An intensive in Youthspeak, generally substituting for the word ‘very’ as in ‘hella expensive’	The world is being subdivided into the various tribes of youth (Trans national to follow.)
9	N00b (2009)	A beginner or ‘newbie’, with numbers (zeroes) replacing the letter Os, emphasizing a new trend in written English	The Geeks will inherit the Earth
10	Futebol (2011)	Ready or not, the World Cup of Futebol, Futbol, Football, and Soccer was on display in Brasil	Sports become an evermore global business
Copyright ©2015 Global Language Monitor
11	Nanobots and Grey Goo (’07)	Have we already witnessed the most horrifying forms of warfare? Not if you haven’t envisioned …	… self-replicating nanobots spewing forth ever mounting piles of grey goo might tend to dampen prospects for living things
12	Climate Change (’00)	Near the top of word usage list since day one of the century.	Focusing on data from the last hundred years actually obscures the magnitude of climate change; paleohistory suggests sea level changes of 300 feet
13	Derivative (’07)	Financial instrument or analytical tool that engendered the Meltdown	Intertwined global financial institutions have the ability to bring down the entire global electronic system if they falter
14	Apocalypse, Armageddon & variations thereof (2012)	The word Apocalypse has been in ascendance in English for some 500 years.  However, recent years has witnessed an unprecedented resurgence	Wars and rumors of war appear to be the least of it
15	Occupy (2011)	‘Occupy’ has risen to pre-eminence through Occupy Movement, the occupation of Iraq, and the so-called ‘Occupied Territories’	The gulf between the haves and have nots, the North and the South, the 1% and all the rest has only worsened through a century of unprecedented economic, scientific and social progress
16	Tsunami (2004/5)	Southeast Asian Tsunami took 250,000 lives	The Southeast Asian Tsunami was a thirty-foot swell that resulted in a quarter of a million deaths. Might a 300-foot rise in sea-level engender a ‘slow Tsunami with deaths in the millions?
17	Inflation (Cosmic) (2014)	OK, so that the Universe expanded a gazillion times faster than the speed of light is now a fact.  Way Cool.	At the beginning of the 20th c., scientists thought our local galaxy was the entire universe; since then our view of the universe has expanded a billion billion times
18	Singularity (2015)	Singularity was originally the name for Cosmic Genesis Event  (the Big Bang),	Spoiler Alert:  Now used to describe when computer intelligence surpasses that of humans (Possibly before mid-century).
19	Global Warming  (2000)	Rated highly from Day One of the decade	The next few hundred (or few thousand) years are gong to be a longer haul than we can now imagine
20	Refugee (2005)	After Katrina, refugees became evacuees	After Syria, evacuees became migrants.
Copyright ©2015 Global Language Monitor
21	Emoticon (2013)	Words without letters conveying emotional responses, such as smileys	Emoticons. Smileys, Emoji’s  communication continues to evolve in unexpected ways
22	Emoji (2014)	In 500 years people will look back on the creation of a new alphabet (the alphaBIT):  Letters + numbers + (emoticons) diacritical marks + emoji (picture words).	The arrival of the new English Alphabet (the AlphaBIT) is apparently at hand
23	Pope Francis (2013)	Also Top Name of the Year for 2013.	A new type of Pontiff sets the stage for all those Popes who follow …
24	WMD (2002)	Iraq’s (Non-existent) Weapons of Mass Destruction	The nuclear device dropped Hiroshima weighed tons, the new backpack versions, mere pounds.
25	Telomeres (2015)	Telomeres are the caps at the end of each strand of DNA that protect our chromosomes.	When telomeres wear away, the chromosomes are destroyed, and death ensues.  The goal: protect telomeres, extend life
26	German Ascendance (2015)	One of the architects of the European Union, German Chancellor Angela Merkel continues her reign as the most powerful woman on the planet	Germany’s tragic misadventures of the 20th c., belie its dominance of the Euro Zone in the 21st.
27	Anthropocene (2015)	A proposed geologic epoch when humans began to impact natural processes	An impact that will only grow for better or ill throughout the century.
28	God Particle (2011)	The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) continues its quest for the Higgs boson, popularly known as the God Particle.	Scientists have calculated a one in fifty million chance that the LHC will generate a small black hole that could devour the Earth.
29	Denier (2014)	An ugly new addition to the trending words list as it has become an evermore present invective with sinister overtones (fully intended).	Political discourse continues to sink to unprecedented levels
30	Carbon Footprint (2008)	The amount of carbon released in a process or activity	Burning a gallon of petrol produces enough CO² to melt 400 gallons of ice at the poles.
Copyright ©2015 Global Language Monitor
31	Slumdog (2008)	Child inhabitants of Mumbai’s slums	Slumdogs continue to multiply as MegaCities continue to seemingly endlessly expand
32	Truthiness (2006)	Steven Colbert’s addition to the language appears to be a keeper; While something may not meet the standard of truth, it certainly appears to be true	Truthiness seems to set the new standard, unfortunately
33	Change (2008)	The top political buzzword of the 2008 US Presidential campaign	Change will continue as a top word into the 22nd century — and beyond
34	Chinglish (2005)	The Chinese-English Hybrid language growing larger as Chinese influence expands	Chinese-English will inevitably cross-fertilize as the two great economic powers contend into the 22nd Century
35	Google (2007)	Founders misspelled actual word ‘googol’	Is Google the prototype of the a new “Idea foundry’
36	Twitter (2009)	The ability to encapsulate human thought in 140 characters	The ability to encapsulate human thought in wisps of wind (or electron streams) will almost certainly follow
37	H1N1 (2009)	More commonly known as Swine Flu	Swine Flu, Bird Flu, Ebola, it will only get worse with the hand of man only abetting the enemy
38	Bubble (2007)	One financial bubble after another as we move into the 21st century	Let’s see: Communism, socialism, fascism, command economies, the silent hand of the market, China’s hybrid — evidently the business cycle will persist
39	The Great War (2014)	The centennial of World War I begins four years of soulful commemorations — as the forces it unloosed continue to ripple into (and most probably through) the 21st c.	As the Great War (and the ravages thereof} continue into the 21st c., what at the odds that its ramifications will continue throughout the 21st
40	Political Transparency (2007)	A noble idea from the Campaign that was among the first casualties of the Obama Administration	The explosion of knowledge portends less transparency not more …
Copyright ©2015 Global Language Monitor

To see the Top Words of 2014

The words are culled from throughout the English-speaking world, which now numbers more than 1.83 billion speakers (January 2013 estimate) GLM employs its NarrativeTracker technologies for global Internet and social media analysis. NarrativeTracker is based on global discourse, providing a real-time, accurate picture about any topic, at any point in time.   NarrativeTracker analyzes the Internet, blogosphere, the top 300,000 print and electronic global media, as well as new social media sources as they emerge.

About the Global Language Monitor