American Dialect Society
Encyclopedia
The American Dialect Society, founded in 1889, is a learned society
Learned society
A learned society is an organization that exists to promote an academic discipline/profession, as well a group of disciplines. Membership may be open to all, may require possession of some qualification, or may be an honor conferred by election, as is the case with the oldest learned societies,...

 "dedicated to the study of the English language in North America, and of other language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...

s, or dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...

s of other languages, influencing it or influenced by it." The Society publishes the academic journal, American Speech
American Speech
American Speech is a quarterly academic journal of the American Dialect Society, established in 1925 and published by the Duke University Press...

. Since its foundation, dialectologists in English-speaking North America have affiliated themselves with the American Dialect Society, an association which in its first constitution defined its objective as "the investigation of the spoken English of the United States and Canada" (Constitution, 1890). Over the years its objective remained essentially the same, only expanded to encompass "the English language in North America, together with other languages or dialects of other languages influencing it or influenced by it" (Fundamentals, 1991).

The organization was founded as part of an effort to create a comprehensive American dialect dictionary, a near century-long undertaking that culminated in the publication of the Dictionary of American Regional English
Dictionary of American Regional English
The Dictionary of American Regional English is a record of American English as spoken in the United States, from its beginning up to the present...

. In 1889, when Joseph Wright began editing the English Dialect Dictionary, a group of American philologists founded the American Dialect Society with the ultimate purpose of producing a similar work for the United States. Members of the Society began to collect material, much of which was published in the Society's journal Dialect Notes, but little was done toward compiling a dictionary recording nationwide usage until Frederic G. Cassidy was appointed Chief Editor in 1963. The first volume of the Dictionary of American Regional English, covering the letters A-C, was published in 1985. The other major project of the Society is the Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada.

The Society has never had more than a few hundred active members. With so few scholars advancing the enterprise, the developments in the field came slowly. Members of the organization include "linguists, lexicographers, etymologists, grammarians, historians, researchers, writers, authors, editors, professors, university students, and independent scholars."

Its activities include a mailing list, which deals chiefly with American English but also carries some discussion of other issues of linguistic interest.

Word of the Year

Since 1991, the American Dialect Society has designated one or more words or terms to be the word of the year
Word of the year
The word of the year, sometimes capitalized as Word of the Year and abbreviated WOTY or WotY, refers to any of various assessments as to the most important word or expression in the public sphere during a specific year....

. The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

credits the American Dialect Society with starting the phenomenon. 2007 was the 18th time ADS members have voted to choose it, though the society says its vote is for fun only and that they do not act in any official capacity of introducing words into the English language.

In addition, the ADS has chosen its "Word of the 1990s" (web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

), "Word of the 20th Century" (jazz
Jazz (word)
The origin of the word jazz is one of the most sought-after word origins in modern American English. The word's intrinsic interest — the American Dialect Society named it the Word of the Twentieth Century — has resulted in considerable research, and its history is well documented...

), and "Word of the Past Millennium" (she
She
She is the third person singular, feminine, nominative case pronoun in modern English.She can also may refer to:-Literature and film:* She: A History of Adventure, a novel by H...

). The society also selects words in other categories that vary from year to year, such as most original, most unnecessary, most outrageous and most likely to succeed (see word of the year
Word of the year
The word of the year, sometimes capitalized as Word of the Year and abbreviated WOTY or WotY, refers to any of various assessments as to the most important word or expression in the public sphere during a specific year....

).

A number of words chosen by the ADS are also on the list of Merriam-Webster's Words of the Year, as well as on the Global Language Monitor
Global Language Monitor
The Global Language Monitor is an Austin, Texas-based company that collectively documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language usage worldwide, with a particular emphasis upon the English language...

's Word of the Year
Word of the year
The word of the year, sometimes capitalized as Word of the Year and abbreviated WOTY or WotY, refers to any of various assessments as to the most important word or expression in the public sphere during a specific year....

 lists. Both Merriam-Webster's and the Global Language Monitor's well-publicized lists are announced more than month before the ADS voting.,

The ADS choices of word of the year are the following:
  • 1990: bushlips (similar to "bullshit
    Bullshit
    Bullshit is a common English expletive which may be shortened to the euphemism bull or the initialism B.S. In British English, "bollocks" is a comparable expletive, although bullshit is commonly used in British English...

    " – stemming from President George H. W. Bush
    George H. W. Bush
    George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...

    's 1988 "Read my lips: no new taxes
    Read my lips: no new taxes
    "Read my lips: no new taxes" is a now-famous phrase spoken by then presidential candidate George H. W. Bush at the 1988 Republican National Convention as he accepted the nomination on August 18. Written by speechwriter Peggy Noonan, the line was the most prominent sound bite from the speech...

    " broken promise)
  • 1991: The mother of all
    The mother of all
    The mother of all... has become a stock phrase in English-language public discourse and popular culture. It implies the largest or most significant example of a class, which completely overshadows all other cases in the class...

    (as in Saddam Hussein
    Saddam Hussein
    Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...

    's foretold "Mother of all battles
    Operation Rah-e-Nijat
    The Operation Rah-e-Nijat was a Pakistani military operation against the Taliban and other Islamist rebels in the South Waziristan area of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas that began on June 19, 2009; a major ground offensive was subsequently launched on October 17...

    ")
  • 1992: Not!
    Not!
    Not! is a grammatical construction in the English language that became a sarcastic catchphrase in North America in the 1990s. A declarative statement is made, followed by a pause and then an emphatic "not!" is postfixed. The result is a negation of the original declarative statement...

    (meaning "just kidding")
  • 1993: information superhighway
    Information superhighway
    The information superhighway or infobahnwas a popular term used through the 1990s to refer to digital communication systems and the Internet telecommunications network. It is associated with United States Senator and later Vice-President Al Gore....

  • 1994: cyber, morph
    Morphing
    Morphing is a special effect in motion pictures and animations that changes one image into another through a seamless transition. Most often it is used to depict one person turning into another through technological means or as part of a fantasy or surreal sequence. Traditionally such a depiction...

    (to change form)
  • 1995: Web
    World Wide Web
    The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

    and (to) newt
    Newt Gingrich
    Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich is a U.S. Republican Party politician who served as the House Minority Whip from 1989 to 1995 and as the 58th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999....

    (to act aggressively as a newcomer).
  • 1996: mom (as in "soccer mom
    Soccer mom
    The phrase soccer mom broadly refers to a middle-class suburban woman who spends a significant amount of her time transporting her school-age children to their sporting events or other activities. Indices of American magazines and newspapers show relatively little usage of the term until a 1995...

    ").
  • 1997: millennium bug
    Year 2000 problem
    The Year 2000 problem was a problem for both digital and non-digital documentation and data storage situations which resulted from the practice of abbreviating a four-digit year to two digits.In computer programs, the practice of representing the year with two...

    .
  • 1998: e- (as in "e-mail").
  • 1999: Y2K
    Year 2000 problem
    The Year 2000 problem was a problem for both digital and non-digital documentation and data storage situations which resulted from the practice of abbreviating a four-digit year to two digits.In computer programs, the practice of representing the year with two...

    .
  • 2000: chad
    Chad (paper)
    Chad refers to paper fragments created when holes are made in a paper, card or similar synthetic materials, typically computer punched tape or punched cards. Sometimes chad has been used as a mass noun or as a countable noun, and the plural is commonly either "chad" or "chads"...

    (from the 2000 Presidential Election
    2000 presidential election
    The 2000 presidential election may refer to:* Croatian presidential elections, 2000* Federal Republic of Yugoslavia presidential election, 2000* Fijian presidential election, 2000* Ghanaian presidential election, 2000* Polish presidential election, 2000...

     controversy in Florida).
  • 2001: 9-11
    September 11, 2001 attacks
    The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...

    .
  • 2002: weapons of mass destruction
    Weapons of mass destruction
    A weapon of mass destruction is a weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans and/or cause great damage to man-made structures , natural structures , or the biosphere in general...

    (WMDs).
  • 2003: metrosexual
    Metrosexual
    Metrosexual is a neologism derived from metropolitan and heterosexual coined in 1994 describing a man who spends a lot of time and money on shopping for his appearance...

    .
  • 2004: red state, blue state, purple state (from the 2004 presidential election
    United States presidential election, 2004
    The United States presidential election of 2004 was the United States' 55th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 2, 2004. Republican Party candidate and incumbent President George W. Bush defeated Democratic Party candidate John Kerry, the then-junior U.S. Senator...

    ).
  • 2005: truthiness
    Truthiness
    Truthiness is a "truth" that a person claims to know intuitively "from the gut" or that it "feels right" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts....

    , popularized on The Colbert Report.
  • 2006: plutoed (demoted or devalued, as happened to the former planet Pluto).
  • 2007: subprime (an adjective used to describe a risky or less than ideal loan, mortgage, or investment).
  • 2008: bailout (a rescue by government of a failing corporation)
  • 2009: tweet (a short message sent via the Twitter service)
  • 2010: app

External links

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