A Word about Words

**No recent posts lately because...gasp...I'm happy. And busy. And when I'm happy together, output temporarily suspends.**

In the news today, I read that it's the season for the top lists of words to emerge. In looking for the story online, I ran into a few VERY interesting blogs on the subject of words that I hadn't encountered before.

First, The Global Language Monitor. I like their beat. Although in English departments divide content between the British and the American, increasingly I see this as a numbskull way to see the bounds of literature and language when it comes to English. Studying colonial English languages and literatures includes a lot of subversion that I like. Some of the projects on GLM are odd but intriging--like their quest to figure out exactly how many words are in the English language. I'm also fond of their Political Buzzword Quotient, "a proprietary algorithm that tracks politically sensitive words and phrases in the print and electronic media, on the Internet and the Blogosphere. The words and phrases are tracked in relation to their frequency, contextual usage and appearance in global media outlets."

According to the GLM, among the top words and phrases this year are: refugee, Chinglish, Recaille, Purple Finger/Thumb, The Golden Quatrilateral, Jumping the Couch, and my favorite, Deferred Success. Yeah...that's right. My diet and exercise plan have not failed me; I'm just experiencing deferred success.