By now most of you have heard that Merriam-Webster has declared "blog" the number one word of the year. Myself, I like CNN's definition "A four-letter term that came to symbolize the difference between old and new media during this year's presidential campaign" better than M-W's "a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks." If this were my online personal journal I surely would have written a post about my challenges with tasks such as getting my car washed and one titled "if you can't change your life, you can at least change your hair," but I have refrained.
In any case, the real news to me is in the rest of the list:
2. incumbent
3. electoral
4. insurgent
5. hurricane
6. cicada
7. peloton : noun (1951) : the main body of riders in a bicycle race
8. partisan
9. sovereignty
10. defenestration
It seems pretty dominated by politics and plagues, huh? Just please reassure me that people simply want to check the spelling of "electoral" or "incumbent" or "partisan." People know what those words mean, right? Why do I get the sense that most of the folks who needed to look up the definition of "incumbent" voted for him.
And defenestration? How great is that. That's always been one of my favorite words. I'm not really clear why it's the tenth most popular word to look up, unless the electoral college and the partisan politics of the incumbent have more people more upset than I thought.
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