Top word of 2007: hybrid (representing all things green)
Photo by ElektraCute. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.
The English language certainly is getting a little more ecological. In the last few years, we've seen biodiesel added to the dictionary and "carbon neutral" become the New Oxford American's Word of the Year. The Global Language Monitor has now tracked (somehow) the Top Word of 2007 and it is "Hybrid (representing all things green)." The number two word is "surge," which we can also argue is at least somewhat related to green cars.
The increasing eco-awareness of English can also be seen in the Global Language Monitor's Top Phrase (Climate Change) and the Top Name (Al Gore). GLM choses these top items based on a proprietary algorithm that analyzes "the entire English-speaking community, what we call Global English."
[Source: Global Language Monitor via NPR]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Blaine Decker 11:35AM (3/29/2008)
You have got to be kidding me. Al Gore is the top name. What an moron. Let me fly all over the world, drive in fancy cars to concerts using elctricity to promote how we need to be more green, all while living in a non-ecofriendly house, driving non-ecofriendly cars, wearing non-ecofriendly clothes, eating factory produced food from non-ecofriendly factories, and wasting the oxygen we breathe and emiting more carbon dioxide in the air. Just saying his name is a waste of oxygen.
On the other hand, those other top words make perfect sense.
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