Word of the Year: Carbon Neutral
Monday Nov 27, 2006
Last Friday the Oxford University Press selected "Carbon Neutral" as Word of the Year. It's true.
Erin McKean, editor in chief of the New Oxford American Dictionary 2e, said “The increasing use of the word carbon neutral reflects not just the greening of our culture, but the greening of our language. When you see first graders trying to make their classrooms carbon neutral, you know the word has become mainstream.”
Runners up included (Can you believe 'funner' didn't win, as in' now that was a 'funner'.):
CSA (community-supported agriculture: a system of food distribution where individual consumers purchase a season’s worth of regularly delivered allotments of the vegetables, fruit, dairy, or other agricultural products grown on a small, usually family-owned farm or orchard.)
DRM (digital rights management: hardware or software that controls access and use of digital data, access and uses that may be disapproved of by rights owners, but that are not necessarily illegal.)
dwarf planet (a new designation for planetlike objects [such as Pluto] that are round and orbit the sun, but have not cleared other objects from their orbits. The word pluton was also proposed as a term for planetlike objects beyond Neptune, with Pluto as their prototype.)
elbow bump (a greeting in which two people touch elbows, recommended by the World Health Organization as an alternative to the handshake in order to reduce the spread of germs.)
fishapod (a humorous name for a newly discovered fossil [Tiktaalik roseae] that has features of both fish and land mammals and as such is considered an evolutionary link between the two.)
funner (an informal/nonstandard comparative of fun.)
ghostriding (the practice of exiting a moving vehicle and dancing either beside it, or on the hood or roof, while the vehicle is in motion.)
Islamofascism (a controversial term equating some modern Islamic movements with the European fascist movements of the early twentieth century.)
pregaming (the practice of consuming alcoholic beverages before attending a sporting event or party, especially one where alcohol may be limited or banned.)
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