Words of the Year

by Harold Fox

Have you heard about the word of the year for 2007?

There really is such a thing. In fact, there are more than one, but let's start with a particular one. This one was called to my attention by Sharon Short, in her "Sanity Check" column in the Dayton Daily News, December 17, 2007. Sharon is a former technical writer who, in addition to her weekly column, has published several mystery novels. For now, let's remain focussed on her report of December 17. That particular word of the year is "w00t," the winner in the online poll conducted by Merriam-Webster, the dictionary people.

As Sharon wrote, "That's right: a 'w,' followed by two zeroes, and a 't.' Pronounced 'woot.' An exclamation of joy or triumph." (Op. cit.) After reading about the large number of one-letter words in the preceding number of "Calling All Verbivores" (CAV), you may think you've seen everything now. (Just a hint from someone of my advanced years, don't bank on it.) In the meantime your perplexity may be eased somewhat by the explanation from the Merriam-Webster folks. They explain that w00t comes from the online gaming community and its "esoteric computer hacker language in which numbers and symbols are put together to look like letters," what is "known as 133t ('leet,' or 'elite') speak." (www.m-w.com/info/07word.htm)

Runners up in M-W's poll were the following words: facebook, conundrum, quixotic, blamestorm, sardoodledom, apathetic, Pecksniffian, hypocrite, and charlatan. (Ibid.) For more about M-W's Word of the Year, including definitions for the runners up, go to Merriam-Webster Online, cited above. Previous words of the year for M-W included "truthiness" (2006) to which "google" was the first runner up, "integrity" (2005), "blog" (2004), and "democracy" (2003) (Ibid .)

Another body that selects a word of the year is the American Dialect Society, whose website is found at www.americandialect.org. Its word of the year for 2007 is "subprime." The definition of "subprime" the Society adduces is "an adjective used to describe a risky or less than ideal loan, mortgage, or investment," (Ibid.) the significance of which must be apparent to anyone who has been keeping up with the news. Previous words of the year, by the Society's vote, include "plutoed" (2006), "truthiness" (2005), "metrosexual" (2003), and "weapons of mass destruction" (2002) (Ibid .). (Sorry, I keep getting a blank page when attempting to see the choice for 2004.) It might interest you that runners up in 2002 included "google" and "blog."

The Society's statement concerning its annual vote is the following:

The vote is the longest-running such vote anywhere, the only one not tied to commercial interests, and the word-of-the-year event up to which all others lead. It is fully informed by the members' expertise in the study of words, but it is far from a solemn occasion. Members in the 118-year-old organization include linguists, lexicographers, etymologists, grammarians, historians, researchers, writers, authors, editors, professors, university students, and independent scholars. In conducting the vote, they act in fun and do not pretend to be officially inducting words into the English language. Instead they are highlighting that language change is normal, ongoing, and entertaining. (Ibid.)

We verbivores respond with a hearty "Amen" to that.

Let's sign off with a puzzler. Try this one from our old friend, Will Shortz.

What familiar phrase meaning "is realistic" consists of two words that are exactly the same except for their fourth letters? The length of these two words is for you to determine. (Citation provided next time)

Good hunting.

Until next time, send me your solutions (or suggestions or complaints or stumpers) at hfox@juno.com or 2005 Burroughs Drive, Dayton, Ohio 45406.

by Harold Fox 

Here’s a puzzler to get us started with this number of “Calling All Verbivores.”(CAV). Your challenge is to come up with seven words, each of which must incorporate one of the three-letter fragments appearing within the sought words in the order given. Note that the blanks do not indicate the number of letters preceding or following the given letter sequence.

__WBO__ __WBE__ __RWO__ __BST__ __MPH__ __FTN__ __TSW__

This puzzler serves as a prelude to my introduction of a notable verbivore. In fact, this man is a recent entry into my pantheon of verbivorous heroes. I had come across his name before, connected with word puzzles. His name is Willard R. Espy, the author of An Almanac of Words at Play (1975) and Another Almanac of Words at Play (1980), both published by Merriam-Webster. The puzzler above is taken from The Best of an Almanac of Words at Play, Merriam-Webster, 1999, the compilation of which was completed by the editors of Merriam-Webster after Espy’s death on February 20, 1999.

Espy wrote several books on wordplay, the first of which was The Game of Words, followed by Thou Improper, Thou Uncommon Noun, and including the culminating “Almanac” books cited above. He also contributed to Punch, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Nation. In the “Introduction” to The Best of an Almanac of Words at Play, Paul Dickson quotes Espy from The Game of Words:

Housebreak your words while they are still too young to know better. When you take one for its exercise, curb it, or the neighbors will become angry. Be considerate but firm. Teach your words to sit, lie, stay, fetch. Reward them for obedience and cleverness with a dog biscuit or, in the case of catty words, with a sardine. …if they respect you, they will like you, and if they like you, there is nothing in their power that they will not do for you. For a few rare people they not only roll over and play dead, but walk on their hind legs.

The “Almanac” books are “yearbooks” in the sense that they are organized by reprinting an entry for each day of the year (yes, February 29th is included in The Best of … edition—I haven’t seen either of the two source books). Thus, they make good bedside resources, providing short selections that can be read serially, randomly, or just any old way you would like. Don’t try this if you are looking for a literary soporific. If you are a genuine verbivore, you will likely find most of the entries to be stimulating, more inhibitors than inducers of sleep.

The puzzler that introduces this number of CAV is from The Best of an Almanac of Words at Play. I am not including the full citation at this time, to avoid tempting you to look up the solution instead of finding one for yourself. The temptation provided is for you to look at CAV in the next issue of Between the Lines. There I shall provide Espy’s solution, as well as some of my own where they differed from his. You can expect to see a few more puzzlers from Espy in upcoming numbers of CAV.

As a closer for this time, I quote some samples of Espy’s paean to punctuation, found in the entry for 17 April (p. 107, op.cit.)

Punctuation can make a difference.

Private

No swimming

Allowed

does not mean the same as

Private?

No. Swimming

Allowed

And some other examples:

The escaping convict dropped a bullet in his leg.
The escaping convict dropped, a bullet in his leg.

I’m sorry you can’t come with us.
I’m sorry. You can’t come with us.

A clever dog knows its master.
A clever dog knows it’s master.

The butler stood by the door and called the guests’ names as they arrived.
The butler stood by the door and called the guests names as they arrived.

Until next time, send me your solutions (or suggestions or complaints or stumpers) at hfox@juno.com or 2005 Burroughs Drive, Dayton, Ohio 45406.