'Blog' picked as word of the year
The term "blog" has been chosen as the top word of 2004 by a US dictionary publisher.Merriam-Webster said "blog" headed the list of most looked-up terms on its site during the last twelve months.
During 2004 blogs, or web logs, have become hugely popular and some have started to influence mainstream media.
Other words on the Merriam-Webster list were associated with major news events such as the US presidential election or natural disasters that hit the US.
Creative surge
Merriam-Webster defines a blog as: "a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks".
Its list of most looked-up words is drawn up every year and it discounts terms such as swear words, that everyone likes to look up, or those that always cause problems, such as "affect" and "effect".
Merriam-Webster said "blog" was the word that people have asked to be defined or explained most often over the last 12 months.
The word will now appear in the 2005 version of Merriam-Webster's printed dictionary.
However, the word is already included in some printed versions of the Oxford English Dictionary.
A spokesman for the Oxford University Press said that the word was now being put into other dictionaries for children and learners, reflecting its mainstream use.
"I think it was the word of last year rather than this year," he said.
"Now we're getting words that derive from it such as 'blogosphere' and so on," he said.
"But," he added, "it's a pretty recent thing and in the way that this happens these days it's got established very quickly."
posted by David Nino at 8:41 AM
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