10 January 2010
This Washington Post article really captures the spirit and atmosphere of the American Dialect Society’s word of the year selection. Dan Zak obviously has a keen eye for the human aspects behind a story.
It has a couple of faults. Normally, any article that quotes Paul J.J. Payack as some kind of expert isn’t worth the reader’s time, but in this case the strength of the rest of the article overcomes this lapse in judgment. And he gets the title Jesse Sheidlower’s excellent book wrong. It’s The F-word, not F***. (I’ll bet someone told him the book was titled “the F-word” and he took that to be a euphemism on the speaker’s part, and then there was a failure to check his facts. One of the problems with laying off copyeditors is an increase in factual errors in reporting.)
The accompanying video is kind of interesting. It’s various linguists talking about their personal choices for word of the year.
