Every January, the American Dialect Society (ADS) votes on the Word of the Year…

Every January, the American Dialect Society (ADS) votes on the Word of the Year for the previous year. The requirements are that the word be new to that year or have risen from relative obscurity to prominence during that year. For the past several years, the ADS has added several other categories of words on which the members vote, such as Most Creative Word of the Year and Word Most Likely to Succeed.
On the following pages you will find the winners and some rival candidates in many of these categories from 2002 to 2009. For each word, identify the word-forma- tion process responsible for the creation of this word (e.g., compounding, clipping). If you are curious about the honored words in other years, visit the ADS Web site at www.americandialect.org.
Exercises 125
Category Winner (in bold) and Other Candidates Word-Formation Process
Selected Words of the Year 2009
Word of the Year
tweet
‘short message sent via Twitter; act of sending such a message’
Most Useful
fail
‘noun or interjection used when something is egre- giously unsuccessful, usually written as “FAIL!”‘
Most Unnecessary
sea kittens
‘fish (according to PETA)’
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126 Chapter 4 English Morphology
Category Winner (in bold) and Other Candidates Word-Formation Process
Selected Words of the Year 2008
Word of the Year
bailout
‘government rescue of a company about to fail’
Most Creative
recombobulation area
‘area in which recently screened air passengers get their clothes and belongings back in
order’
Most Unnecessary
moofing
‘”mobile out of office,” or working on the go with laptop or phone’
Selected Words of the Year 2007
Word of the Year
subprime
‘risky or less than ideal loan, mortgage, or investment’
Most Useful/Likely
green
– ‘prefix of combining form designating to Succeed environmental concern’
Most Creative
googleganger
‘person with your name who shows up when you google yourself’
Selected Words of the Year 2006
Word of the Year
to pluto/be plutoed
‘demote or devalue something, as Pluto was demoted from planet status’
Most Useful
climate canary
‘organism or species whose poor health or declining numbers suggest a broader environmental
change’
Most Euphemistic
waterboarding
‘interrogation technique that simulates drowning’
Selected Words of the Year 2005
Word of the Year
truthiness
‘what one wishes to be the truth, regardless of the facts’
Most Useful
podcast
‘audio or video file for downloading’
Most Creative
whale-tail
‘appearance of thong or g-string underwear worn above the waistband’
Most Outrageous
crotchfruit
‘child or children’
Most Likely
sudoku
‘number puzzle from Japan’ to Succeed
Selected Words of the Year 2004
Word of the Year
red/blue/purple states
‘states favoring Republicans, favoring Democrats, or undecided, respectively’
Most Useful
phish
‘induce someone to reveal private information by means of a deceptive e-mail’
Most Euphemistic
badly sourced
‘false’
Most Unnecessary
stalkette
‘female stalker’
Exercises 127
Category Winner (in bold) and Other Candidates Word-Formation Process
Selected Words of the Year 2003
Word of the Year
metrosexual
‘fashion-conscious urban male’
Most Useful
flexitarian
‘vegetarian who occasionally eats meat’
Most Creative
freegan
‘person who eats only free food’
Most Likely
SARS
‘Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome’ to Succeed
Selected Words of the Year 2002
Word of the Year
WMD
(Weapons of Mass Destruction)
Most Useful
google
(as a verb)
dataveillance
‘surveillance using computer data’
Most Creative
Iraqnophobia
‘strong fear of Iraq’
dialarhoea
‘inadvertent dialing of a cell phone in a pocket or handbag’
Most Unnecessary
Saddameter
‘meter on television showing daily likeli- hood of war with Iraq’