2009 Word of the Year

2009 Word of the Year
American Dialect Society

All nominations will be considered for the ADS 20th Annual Word-of-the-Year (WOTY) vote. Nominations from the public can still be sent to: woty@americandialect.org
The best "word of the year" candidates will be:
—new or newly popular in 2009
—widely or prominently used in 2009
—indicative or reflective of the national discourse

WOTY will be held in Baltimore, Maryland, on Friday, January 8, 2010, and is open at no cost to members of the press and public. Detailed information on where and when the final vote will be held is here.

Check out the early nominations from society members who specialize in following language trends:

• Nominations from Grant Barrett, chair of the American Dialect Society's New Words Committee editor of the "Among the New Words" column of the society's journal American Speech.
• Nominations from Wayne Glowka, Dean of the School of Arts and Humanities at Reinhardt College in Waleska, Georgia.
• Nominations from Ben Zimmer, executive producer of the Visual Thesaurus, and member of the Executive Council of the American Dialect Society.
• Nominations from David Barnhart of Lexik House, editor of the Barnhart Dictionary Companion.
• Nominations from Nancy Friedman, a name developer at Wordworking in Oakland, California. She keeps the blog Fritinancy.