JCC Word of the Year (2012)

So, as an official member of the American Dialect Society, one of my member privileges is being able to submit nominations and vote on the ADS' widely-publicized "word of the year." The nominations will be submitted tomorrow night at the Linguistic Society of America's annual meeting, and the winner will be chosen Friday night.

I ask you, members of the JCC, to please help me in drafting a list of words that I can nominate for this most prestigious of honors.

And...go:

 

yolo!

 

Fiscal Cliff

 

Mancession.

 

Gangnam

 

Lobstrominous

 

The word that millions of people horribly mispronounce despite it being in the first line of the ****ing song.

 

Sounds like you're not worthy of your member privileges if you're asking the JCC for help.

 

Splunge

 

Jello, it's American English. Not proper English. So it doesn't actually matter?

 

A bit of a cheat but... '47%'

 

Binders

 

Beezel.

 

pizza.

 

First occurrence of the word 'Jello' without a dash: 1977.

Make mine a small sole.

 

HECK NO

 

This has been the year of the Derp.

 

I need to go on a Cheers rewatch soon.

 

That's a little known fact.

 

Arlolocaust

 

Swerve

 

So here are the final results from tonight's voting:

Most Useful

-(po)calypse, -(ma)geddon: hyperbolic
combining forms for various catastrophes

Defeated these nominees:

YOLO: acronym for “You Only Live Once,”
often used sarcastically or self-deprecatingly
hate-watching: continuing to follow a
television show despite having an aversion to it
beardruff: dandruff from one’s beard


Most Creative

gate lice: airline passengers who crowd around
a gate waiting to board

Defeated these nominees:

mansplaining: a man’s condescending
explanation to a female audience
alpacalypse: the Mayan apocalypse predicted
for Dec. 21, 2012 (alpaca + -lypse)
dancelexia: inability to pull off dance moves
(such as misspelling “YMCA”)


Most Unnecesary

legitimate rape: type of rape that Missouri
Senate candidate Todd Akin claimed rarely
results in pregnancy

Defeated these nominees:

Frankenstorm: term for Hurricane Sandy’s
hybrid storm system (after Frankenstein’s
monster)
HD: abbreviation for “high-definition,” used for
things that could not be high-definition
feels: slangy shortening of “feelings”


Most Outrageous

legitimate rape: type of rape that Missouri
Senate candidate Todd Akin claimed rarely
results in pregnancy

Defeated these nominees:

Dunlop effect: when one’s stomach protrudes
over ill-fitting pants (“belly done lop over the
belt”)
slut-shaming: attacking a woman for socially
stigmatized sexual activity
butt-chugging: an alcohol enema, used in
college fraternity hazing rituals


Most Euphemistic

self-deportation: policy of encouraging illegal
immigrants to return voluntarily to their home
countries

Defeated these nominees:

disruptive: destroying existing business models
Gray Thursday: name given to Thanksgiving
as a shopping day before Black Friday
ratchet: slang term originally referring to
“urban divas” now used to mean “ghetto”


Most Likely to Succeed

marriage equality: legal recognition of samesex
marriage

Defeated these nominees:

fiscal cliff: threat of spending cuts and tax
increases looming over end-of-year budget
negotiations
superstorm: an unusually large and destructive
storm, such as Hurricane Sandy
MOOC: acronym for “massive open online
course”
big data: large collections of digital information


Least Likely to Succeed

phablet: mid-sized electronic device between a
smartphone and a tablet - CO-WINNER with YOLO, which was a last-minute nomination from the floor. phablet actually won by a single vote, but to avoid to controversy the chair decided to give them both winning status


Defeated these nominees:
cray-cray: slangy shortening and reduplication
of “crazy”
Gangnam style: the trendy style of Seoul’s
Gangnam district, as used in the Korean pop
song of the same name
Windows Metro: name originally used for the
Windows 8 operating system


Election Words

binders full of women - another last-minute nomination from the floor

Defeated these nominees:

47 percent: portion of the population that does
not pay federal income tax (as used by Romney)
Etch-a-Sketch: metaphor of reinvention used
by Romney campaign adviser Eric Fehrnstrom
Eastwooding: photo fad inspired by Clint
Eastwood’s unscripted speech at the RNC
Romney/Obama: names of candidates used for
blends (Obamaloney, Obamageddon, Romnesia,
Romney Hood)

...and the WORD OF THE YEAR for 2012 ...

hashtag - yet another nomination from the floor. Runner-up was marriage equality.

I actually voted for Gangnam Style for WOTY 2012, although I wasn't particularly happy with any of the nominees. I'm pretty sure hashtag was already nominated a couple years ago (when Twitter was getting really big).

Although I've been a member of the ADS for a couple years, this was my first chance to vote on the WOTY. I have to say that voting has never been so funny and entertaining. There was more than one joke involving butt-chugging.