New Oxford American Dictionary blog editor Lauren Appelwick is reporting “refudiate” as the 2010 Word of the Year, joining past recipients “unfriend”, “truthiness” and so many other wonders of the internet age. Lexicographer Susie Dent makes her subjective choice each year (many collected here). As she is employed by the Oxford University Press, additional credibility is lent to her selections I can only assume by virtue of “Oxford” and “University” being used in the same sentence. Thus, an internet search for “word of the year” often tags the “Oxford” or “Oxford Dictionary” or some similar modifier to the “WOTY”.
I have fun fracturing the mother tongue all the time. But I don’t expect any of my misconstruations to make their way into the lexicon of American English. Particularly when they are disavowed as mistweets then claimed intentional.
I don’t know about you, but for me, “Oxford” unfairly or not conjures up images of staid and primped stuffed shirts. Make no mistake. Some of them never got over our insurrection and they are laughing while mocking us.
And that is ginormously discombobulating.
Jim: I can't help but notice how sesquipedalian you have become lately . . .
Nice worm, uh word, there, Roxanne. (I hope my references aren't too obscure, though they quite often are.)
Never use a big word when a diminutive synonym will suffice.
I see WORM and remember the newfangled Write Once Read Many drives of around 1990. This new idea was for an optical disk drive that could burn data onto a blank disk once, for many-times reading. The blank WORM media was only $25 a disk, compared to a thousand bucks for a comparably sized hard disk. Now, they call 'em CD-R's and sell 'em for a few cents each. I guess the earlier acronym wasn't appealing.