Linguists vote 'app' as Word of the Year

PITTSBURGH - The tech slang "app" was voted the 2010 "Word of theYear" Friday by the American Dialect Society, beating out CookieMonster's "nom, nom, nom, nom."

The shortened slang term for a computer or smart phoneapplication was picked by the linguists group as the word that bestsums up the country's preoccupation last year.

"Nom" - a chat-, tweet-, and text-friendly syllable that connotes"yummy food" - was the runner-up. It derives from the Sesame Streetcharacter's sound as he devours his favorite food.

The vote came at a Pittsburgh hotel ballroom during the nationalconference of the Linguistic Society of America, an umbrella groupthat includes the Dialect Society. About 120 of the 1,000 conferenceattendees voted in the "competition" with neither side entirelysatisfied.

Critics of "app" said the word was somewhat stale, whileproponents said 2010 was the year the word became omnipresent - withone arguing that her elderly mother knows the term, even though thewoman doesn't have any apps.

"Some years there's a very clear choice," said Allan Metcalf, theDialect Society's executive secretary.

"I think this past year there wasn't anything clearly dominant,"Metcalf said. "But there's no question 'app'is a very powerfulword."

Though the "Word Of The Year" is perhaps the best known item onthe national conference agenda, it's hardly the most serious. Theprogram includes discussion of such subjects as school curriculumand raising education standards.

And that's one reason Metcalf said the "Word Of The Year" isn'tuniversally popular among the conferees.

"But, on the other hand, it attracts a lot of attention to ourwork," he said.

Anyone could nominate a "Word of the Year" by e-mail or Twitter,using links on americandialect.com.

"Tweet" and "Google" were last year's "Word of the Year" and"Word of the Decade."

As with app, tech terms have been among the most popular sincethe group started the competition in 1990. Some previous winnersinclude "millennium bug" (1997), "information superhighway" (1993),and "web" (word of the 1990s).

Web words are so popular that even the techie prefix "e" - as ine-mail - won in 1998.

When the Internet doesn't hold sway, current events or politicstend to dominate. Listed among nominees on the group's website were"tea bagger," "Palinism" and the Palinism "refudiate." On Friday,voters chose to nix political terms altogether, including"Obamacare" and "mama grizzly" - yes, yet another Palinism,referring to conservative women who are protective of theirfamilies.

The inaugural winner, in 1990, was Bushlips, defined as"insincere political rhetoric" an apparent reference to PresidentGeorge H.W. Bush's broken "Read my lips, no new taxes!" promise.Chad, as in "hanging," was 2000's word after the contested victoryby Bush's son, and 2002's winner was also taken from a pair of Bushlips: WMD, as in "weapons of mass destruction."

BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico spawned many 2010 nominees,but none made the final cut, not even "spillion," defined as animmeasurable number, in reference to the billions of gallons of oilthat spilled into the waters.