The American Dialect Society, the OG Word of the Year anointer, usually holds its WotY contest in person, and it’s always a rollicking event. This year ADS is soliciting nominations and taking reservations online, and there’s a bonus pre-event event: On December 10 at 12 pm EST/9 am PST, famous word guy Ben Zimmer, in partnership with Washington’s new Planet Word Museum, will explain the nomination and selection processes and talk about his year’s likely candidates. Register here (free). Or you can skip directly to registration for the ADS livestream on December 17, and nominate up to five words while you’re at it.
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“What’s the word?/Thunderbird!/How’s it sold?/Good and cold.” More about the word (and the wine) at Modern Drunkard magazine.
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In other departing-from-tradition news, Lynne Murphy, the American linguist who blogs at Separated by a Common Language, is partnering this year with Atlas Obscura to present her Words of the Year. In case you’re new to this competition, each year Lynne (helped by her readers) picks a US-to-UK import and a UK-to-US import. Usually she announces the winners on her blog on Christmas Day, but this year the announcement is on December 19, and it’s an online event with Lynne herself. I’ve been lucky enough to attend a Lynne Murphy presentation, and I can assure you it’ll be worth the $15 to register. And I’ve gone on an Atlas Obscura “experience” in San Francisco, so I can assure you that the event will be well organized and fun. Of course, you can still submit nominations on Lynne’s blog: that’s free, as always. Be sure to check out past winners before you plunge in.
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“Humaning,” “thumb-stopping,” “hypertelling,” “phygital”: Tiffany Hsu and Sapna Maheshwari, writing for the New York Times, cast a quizzical eye at the latest in corporate jargon. I’ve written about one of the terms on the list, customer journey, in a piece I wrote about journey-overload.
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Over at Strong Language, the sweary blog about swearing, I solved all your sweary-holiday-gift challenges. (The post is very sweary.) I’ve been wondering: Should Strong Language choose a Swear of the Year? If your answer is fuck, yeah, what should the 2020 Swear of the Year be?
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