Between the credit crunch and the financial collapse, it looked for a while like the English language couldn't afford a word of the year this year.
But that was before English got a last-minute bailout in the form of Barack Obama and his Camelot Frères financial dream time. According to a pseudo-scientific calculation made by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, when Obama speaks, stocks go up, but when George Bush praises free-market capitalism, they tank.
Why, it was only a week ago that Fritinancy made a very similar WOTY prediction.
The Web of Language's Dennis Baron, a professor of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois, further notes that:
Obama has already become productive in English, producing spinoffs like Obama-mania, or the clipped form, Obamania, which is either positive or negative. There's also Obamarama. The president's supporters shouted "Gobama" during the campaign, and his opponents responded with "Nobama," which actually makes the president sound Japanese.
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