'Google' is officially Word of the Decade

by Stevie Smith - Jan 12 2010, 09:37

Firmly grasping its place in history, the influence associated with online social networking, micro-blogging and the whole Web 2.0 phenomenon has this week been officially recognised by language expects at The American Dialect Society. 

According to the association’s latest round of popularity studies into the English language, Google (as in ‘Google it’) has emerged as the top word of the last decade, while ‘tweet’ has been crowned the top word of 2009.

“Both word ares, in the end, products of the Information Age, where every person has the ability to satisfy curiosity and to broadcast to a select following, both via the Internet,” commented Grant Barrett, chairman of the society’s New Words Committee.

“I really thought ‘blog’ would take the honors in the Word of the Decade category, but more people Google than blog, don’t they?” he added. “Plus, many people think ‘blog’ just sounds ugly. Maybe Google’s trademark lawyers would have preferred it, anyway.

With ‘tweet’ securing top spot as word of the year, it marks yet another step forward for massively popular micro-blog Twitter, which was recently awarded Word of the Year status by the Global Language Monitor during its annual survey of media and online-based words and phrases.

Around the Web