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The inclusion of technological words was seen as a reflection of the influence that social networking sites have had on English vocabulary.
The list was chosen by Susie Dent, the dictionary expert on Channel 4’s game show Countdown, who scanned the Oxford English Corpus, a two billion word database.
"Unfriend", meaning to remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a site such as Facebook, was voted the New Oxford American Dictionary’s word of the year in America, and is included along with its alternative defriend.
"Tweetups", which are meetings or other gatherings organised by means of posts on the social networking service Twitter, are said to have grown in popularity.
Bossnapping – noun: (in France) the prevention of senior managers from leaving company premises for a period of time by their employees, in order to protest about large-scale redundancies and cutbacks
Zombie bank – noun: a financial institution whose liabilities are greater than its assets, but which continues to operate because of government support
Geoengineering/ecohacking – noun: the deliberate large-scale manipulation of an environmental process that affects the earth's climate, in an attempt to counteract the effects of global warming.
Jeggings – plural noun: close-fitting leggings made of fabric that resembles denim in appearance [from jeans + leggings]
Minute mentoring – noun: a system of advising aspiring professionals based on the format of speed-dating.
Phantonym – noun: a word that looks as it if means one thing but in fact means something quite different. [from ‘phantom + antonym]
(for example fulsome, used by President Obama to mean ‘full’, when in fact it is now chiefly used in reference to excessive flattery).
Tweetup – noun: a meeting or other gathering organised by means of posts on the social networking service Twitter. [from tweet + up on the pattern of MEETUP]
Staycation – noun: a holiday spent in one's home country rather than abroad, or one spent at home and involving day trips to local attractions
Simples – exclamation: used to say that something is very easy to achieve [from the 'compare the meerkat' TV advert]
Great Recession – noun: term for the current recession, modelled on the Great Depression.
Hashtag – noun: a # [hash] sign added to a word or phrase that enables Twitter users to search for tweets (postings on the Twitter site) that contain similarly tagged items and view thematic sets.
Freemium – noun: a business model in which some basic services are provided for free, with the aim of enticing users to pay for additional, premium features or content
Paywall – noun: a way of blocking access to a part of a website which is only available to paying subscribers
Unfriend/defriend – verb: to remove from one's ‘friends’ list (e.g. on a social networking website)
Tag cloud – noun: a visual depiction of the word content of a website, or of user-generated tags attached to online content, typically using colour and font size to represent the prominence or frequency of the words or tags depicted.
Slashdot effect – noun: the slowing down or crashing of a small website due to a huge increase in traffic when the website is linked to another, much more popular one.
Newly topical
Snollygoster – noun: a shrewd, unprincipled person, especially a politician
Redact – verb: censor or obscure (part of a text) for legal or security purposes.
Epigenome – noun: the pattern of chemical switches in all 2000 types of human cell that indexes genetic information
The list was chosen by Susie Dent, the dictionary expert on Channel 4’s game show Countdown, who scanned the Oxford English Corpus, a two billion word database.
"Unfriend", meaning to remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a site such as Facebook, was voted the New Oxford American Dictionary’s word of the year in America, and is included along with its alternative defriend.
"Tweetups", which are meetings or other gatherings organised by means of posts on the social networking service Twitter, are said to have grown in popularity.
Bossnapping – noun: (in France) the prevention of senior managers from leaving company premises for a period of time by their employees, in order to protest about large-scale redundancies and cutbacks
Zombie bank – noun: a financial institution whose liabilities are greater than its assets, but which continues to operate because of government support
Geoengineering/ecohacking – noun: the deliberate large-scale manipulation of an environmental process that affects the earth's climate, in an attempt to counteract the effects of global warming.
Jeggings – plural noun: close-fitting leggings made of fabric that resembles denim in appearance [from jeans + leggings]
Minute mentoring – noun: a system of advising aspiring professionals based on the format of speed-dating.
Phantonym – noun: a word that looks as it if means one thing but in fact means something quite different. [from ‘phantom + antonym]
(for example fulsome, used by President Obama to mean ‘full’, when in fact it is now chiefly used in reference to excessive flattery).
Tweetup – noun: a meeting or other gathering organised by means of posts on the social networking service Twitter. [from tweet + up on the pattern of MEETUP]
Staycation – noun: a holiday spent in one's home country rather than abroad, or one spent at home and involving day trips to local attractions
Simples – exclamation: used to say that something is very easy to achieve [from the 'compare the meerkat' TV advert]
Great Recession – noun: term for the current recession, modelled on the Great Depression.
Hashtag – noun: a # [hash] sign added to a word or phrase that enables Twitter users to search for tweets (postings on the Twitter site) that contain similarly tagged items and view thematic sets.
Freemium – noun: a business model in which some basic services are provided for free, with the aim of enticing users to pay for additional, premium features or content
Paywall – noun: a way of blocking access to a part of a website which is only available to paying subscribers
Unfriend/defriend – verb: to remove from one's ‘friends’ list (e.g. on a social networking website)
Tag cloud – noun: a visual depiction of the word content of a website, or of user-generated tags attached to online content, typically using colour and font size to represent the prominence or frequency of the words or tags depicted.
Slashdot effect – noun: the slowing down or crashing of a small website due to a huge increase in traffic when the website is linked to another, much more popular one.
Newly topical
Snollygoster – noun: a shrewd, unprincipled person, especially a politician
Redact – verb: censor or obscure (part of a text) for legal or security purposes.
Epigenome – noun: the pattern of chemical switches in all 2000 types of human cell that indexes genetic information
