Lists and Rankings: Oxford Word of the Year

The 2007 Word of the Year is (drum-roll please) locavore.

“Locavore” was coined two years ago by a group of four women in San Francisco who proposed that local residents should try to eat only food grown or produced within a 100-mile radius. Other regional movements have emerged since then, though some groups refer to themselves as “localvores” rather than “locavores.” However it’s spelled, it’s a word to watch.

Runners-Up:

aging in place: the process of growing older while living in one’s own residence, instead of having to move to a new home or community

bacn: email notifications, such as news alerts and social networking updates, that are considered more desirable than unwanted “spam” (coined at PodCamp Pittsburgh in Aug. 2007 and popularized in the blogging community)

cloudware: online applications, such as webmail, powered by massive data storage facilities, also called “cloud servers”

colony collapse disorder: a still-unexplained phenomenon resulting in the widespread disappearance of honeybees from beehives, first observed in late 2006

cougar: an older woman who romantically pursues younger men

MRAP vehicle: Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, designed to protect troops from improvised explosive devices (IEDs)

mumblecore: an independent film movement featuring low-budget production, non-professional actors, and largely improvised dialogue

previvor: a person who has not been diagnosed with a form of cancer but has survived a genetic predisposition for cancer

social graph: the network of one’s friends and connections on social websites such as Facebook and Myspace

tase (or taze): to stun with a Taser (popularized by a Sep. 2007 incident in which a University of Florida student was filmed being stunned by a Taser at a public forum)

upcycling: the transformation of waste materials into something more useful or valuable

Source: Oxford University Press USA

From the ADS web site:
In its 17th annual words of the year vote, the American Dialect Society voted “plutoed” as the word of the year, in a run-off against “climate canary.” To pluto is to demote or devalue someone or something, as happened to the former planet Pluto when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto no longer met its definition of a planet.

Complete Press Release with Nominees, Vote Totals, and Definitions (7 pages; PDF)

Other winners (in selected categories)
+ Most Useful: climate canary, 2nd place: “Data Valdez”
+ Most Unnecessary: SuriKat
+ Most Euphemistic: waterboarding
+ Most Likely to Succeed: YouTube (as a verb)
+ Least Likely to Succeed: grup

The news release also contains a list of previous words of year including the 2005 winner: “truthiness.”

In 1995 the words of the year (tie) were “World Wide Web” and “newt” (to make aggressive changes as a newcomer).

The first ADS Word of the Year in 1990 was “bushlips” (insincere political rhetoric).

Source: American Dialect Society (via DocuTicker)

Here are the full titles of the lists available from Nielsen Media Research in this compilation. We’ve bolded the lists that related to online/Internet content.

+ Top 10 TV Programs – Regularly Scheduled – 2006

+ Top 10 TV Programs – Single Telecasts – 2006

+ Top 10 “Timeshifted” Primetime TV Programs – 2006

+ Top 10 Box Office – All Theatrical – 2006

+ Top 10 Box Office – Animated Movies – 2006

+ Top 10 Box Office – Documentaries – 2006

+ Top 10 DVD Sales – 2006

+ Top 10 Albums – 2006

(more…)

We’ve been busy posting numerous year-end lists on ResourceShelf during the past few weeks. Here are a few more. You can find all of what we’ve posted to this point by reviewing the Year-End Wrap Ups category.

+ Top Stories of 2006 (Editors and News Directors of the AP)
See Also: AP Sports Story of the Year: Tiger’s wins … and loss
See Also: AP Male Athlete of 2006 in close vote over LT
See Also: Ochoa wins AP Female Athlete award in a landslide

+ 2006 Year End Music Charts (via Radio & Records)
Numerous music categories. U.S. and Canadian charts.

+ IMDb.com’s Top 25 Stars for 2006

+ The United Nations 10 Stories the World Should Hear More About (via United Nations)

+ The Top 10 Health Stories of 2006
Source: Harvard Health Letter

+ The 10 Most Outrageous Civil Liberties Violations of 2006
“I love those year-end roundups—ubiquitous annual lists of greatest films and albums and lip glosses and tractors. It’s reassuring that all human information can be wrestled into bundles of 10. In that spirit, Slate proudly presents, the top 10 civil liberties nightmares of the year….”
Source: Slate

+ Top online media stories of 2006
Source: Cyberjournalist.net

+ Open Government: The 2006 Transparency Awards
Source: OMB Watch

+ “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” for 2006
Source: Judicial Watch

Class of ‘07: The The Fast Company/Monitor Group Social Capitalist Award Winners
“The amazing organizations that received the Fast Company/Monitor Group Social Capitalist Awards have found a better way to do good: They’re using the disciplines of the corporate world to tackle daunting social problems. In our fourth exclusive ranking, we used a similarly hard-nosed approach to find the 43 best social entrepreneurs.”
+ Chart of winners
Source: FastCompany.com

MANY MORE LISTS and Rankings (from Popular Search Terms to Box Office Grosses to Top Songs) Can be Found by Browsing this RS Category.

See Also: More Lists via Library Boy

Lake Superior State University Banished Words List 2007

Lake Superior State University proposes an exit strategy for 2006: the 32nd annual List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness.

On Dec. 31, 1975, former LSSU Public Relations Director Bill Rabe and some colleagues cooked up the whimsical idea to banish overused words and phrases and issued the first list on New Year’s Day. Much to the delight of word enthusiasts everywhere, the list has stayed the course into a fourth decade.

Through the years, LSSU has received thousands of nominations for the list, which is closing in on its 1000th banishment.

This year’s list is culled from more than 4,500 nominations received mostly through the university’s website. Word-watchers target pet peeves from everyday speech, as well as from the news, fields of education, technology, advertising, politics and more. A committee makes a final cut in late December. The list is released on New Year’s Day.

So gitmo chipotle-flavored eggnog, curl up with an undocumented alien, and cut-and-run to the 2007 list. It won’t be coming to a theater near you.

Read the 2007 list.

Source: Lake Superior State University

+ The Ten Best Food Trends of 2006

+ The Ten Worst Food Trends of 2006

+ Food and Drink Predictions for 2007

Source: Epicurious

From the article:

Concert tours by the Rolling Stones, Barbra Streisand and country duo Tim McGraw and Faith Hill were among the top-grossing tours in North America in 2006, helping drive ticket revenue to a record $3.6 billion (euro2.7 billion), according to Pollstar, the industry trade magazine.

Source: AP (via Pollstar)