Word Of The Year: The Most Memorable Words Of 2011

By Emily Temple For Flavorwire

Every year, the American Dialect Society chooses a word of the year — and they’re not the only ones. This week, we found out that Merriam-Webster has already chosen their own word of the year: “pragmatic,” which we’re not sure reflects the state of the nation. The American Dialect Society chooses their word of the year based on the following criteria: the word must be “demonstrably new or newly popular in 2011, widely and/or prominently used in 2011, indicative or reflective of the popular discourse and not a peeve or a complaint about overuse or misuse.” They also stipulate that “Multi-word compounds or phrases that act as stand-alone lexical items are also welcomed.” To give you a better idea: last year, the world they picked was “app.”

We’ve come up with a list of a few of our nominees for possible words of the year, but of course there are many more — let us know which words you would nominate in the comments!

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