Reprinted with permission of The San Francisco Chronicle
Top Ten Word Lists of 2000 Announced by yourDictionary.com
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December 26, 2000, DANVILLE, California - yourDictionary.com (YDC), the premier global language portal, today announced the release of its Top Ten Words of 2000 list, as well as
associated lists covering political, corporate, new products, Internet buzzwords, sports, corporate name changes, and various other topics.
"Due to the spread of the Internet, language is evolving at an ever faster rate," said Paul J.J. Payack, president and C.E.O. of yourDictionary.com, "Our lists attempt to capture that
evolution and innovations in word choice and usage." The linguistic specialists at yourDictionary.com queried experts around the world to determine their rankings.
The lists include commentary by Paul J.J. Payack and Robert Beard, Chief Linguistics Officer of yourDictionary.com.
Top Ten Words of 2000 |
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| 1. Chad |
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Came in late, yet came on strong |
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| 2. Millennium |
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No staying power; actually Top Word of 1999 |
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| 3. Y2K |
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Ditto |
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| 4. Sydney Olympics |
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The two names were interchangeable |
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| 5. Dot-com |
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Momentum from '99; crash only emphasized the word |
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| 6. Elian |
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Elian Gonzalez, the poster child for opposing world-views |
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| 7. God |
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Presidential candidates Gore and Bush both invoked the name with ever-growing frequency throughout the campaign |
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| 8. Pelletizing |
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At the crux of the Bridgestone/Firestone tire recall, the process of bonding rubber to steel mesh in the steel-belted radial tire-making process |
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| 9. Intifada |
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The conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians escalated in late September |
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| 10. Tiger |
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Tiger Woods set the golfing world afire |
Best New Product Names |
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| 1. Celebrex |
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Celecoxib capsules to combat pain from arthritis pain from Searle. (Although formally launched in 1999, gained significant mind share in 2000.) Excellent example of the many
'celery-class' names, such as Celestra, Celestron, Cellera, and the like |
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| 2. Black Rocket |
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Bundled services from Genuity to help build e-business infrastructures |
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| 3. The Razor |
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The high tech scooter, brilliantly marketed by Sharper Image |
Worst New Product Name |
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| Too many to single any out. |
Best Corporate Name Change |
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| BigChalk |
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Spun off from the staid 'brick 'n mortar' Bell & Howell; the name readily evokes the site's educational networking mission |
Worst Corporate Name Changes |
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| 1. Accenture |
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From Andersen Consulting, one of the great branded names. $100 million launch scheduled for January 1st, will not be enough |
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| 2. Verizon |
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From GTE/Bell Atlantic merger, customers tell us they are mystified |
Word that has 'pulled a 180' in meaning |
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| Dot-com |
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Dot-com has gone from connoting fabulous wealth to denoting foolish waste of capital. |
Top corporate clichés (phrase) |
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| 1. Time to fish or cut bait |
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Traced back to the 1600s; still incomprehensible |
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| 2. Think outside the box |
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Using this cliché is now an example of 'inside the box' thinking |
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| 3. Pushing the envelope |
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A corruption of the 'Right Stuff' pilots' term for pushing the edge of the aerodynamic 'envelope' as they passed through Mach 1 to Mach 2 and Mach 3, and beyond |
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| 4. Starting from ground zero |
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Ground zero is the epicenter of a thermonuclear blast; most would agree that 'square one' is a much better place from which to start |
Top corporate buzzwords (single word or acronym) |
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| 1. B2B Business-to-business |
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| 2. B2C Business-to-consumer |
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| 3. ASP Application service provider |
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| 4. SSP Software service provider |
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| 5. CRM Customer relationship management |
Top Corporate Buzzwords (compound word) |
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| 1. E-commerce |
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Electronic commerce |
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| 2. Killer App |
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The 'pull' application that will enable you to destroy your competition and gain inordinate market share |
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| 3. Viral marketing |
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Any marketing that doesn't cost a lot of money (or that you can't quite explain) |
Top Color-related Words |
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| 1. Periwinkle |
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A shade of purple |
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| 2. Sage |
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A shade of green |
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| 3. Cornflower |
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A shade of blue |
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| 4. Salmon |
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A shade of pink |
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| 5. Anything 'pearlized' |
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A textured look for any color |
Top Internet-related Words |
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| 1. Eyeballs |
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A visitor to a website |
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| 2. Stickiness |
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The amount of time a visitor stays on a website |
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| 3. Click-through |
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Clicking on a banner ad on a website |
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| 4. Click-and-mortar |
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What dot-coms are attempting to become; a hybrid between a dot-com and a 'brick-and-mortar' (viz. profitable) operation |
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| 5. Lay-offs |
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What happens when you don't succeed in transforming your dot-com into a click-and-mortar operation |
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| 6. Web speed |
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The speed at which your business can crash |
Top Advertising Word |
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| 1. Edgy |
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A style of advertising, video production, or copywriting that appears to lack the refinement and sophistication of more polished 'traditional' efforts but captures the truer essence
of the subject; also amazingly irritating. |
Top Sports Words |
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| 1. Sydney Olympics |
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The planet's largest sporting event; we've found no one who claims to have actually watched it all |
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| 2. Armstrong |
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Lance captivated the public with his amazing come back story in the Tour de France |
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| 3. Shaq |
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Shaq (and the LA Lakers) win the NBA crown |
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| 4. A-Rod |
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Since Alex Rodriguez signed his $250 million contract, A-Rod has become a verb; 'To A-Rod' is a good thing |
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| 5. St. Louis Rams |
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A long shot, marches to a Super Bowl triumph |
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| 6. Subway Series |
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Would have ranked higher, but was mainly a New York Media phenomenon |
Top Political Words |
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| 1. Chad |
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No explanation necessary |
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| 2. Dimpled Chad |
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No explanation necessary |
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| 3. Pregnant Chad |
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No explanation necessary |
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| 4. Hanging Chad |
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No explanation necessary |
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| 5. Lockbox |
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No explanation necessary |
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| 6. Disenfranchisement |
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No explanation necessary |
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| 7. Florida |
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No explanation necessary |
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| 8. Undervote |
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No explanation necessary |
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| 9. Overvote |
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No explanation necessary |
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| 10. Dubya (also 'W') |
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No explanation necessary |
Possible Future Evolution of the Word 'chad' |
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| 1. Chad |
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Used as a verb meaning to break apart or fragment; this would cover mental, physical, and emotional breakdowns; it could be applied to marriages, corporations, and political
entities such as the former Soviet empire, in this sense, chadanize, as in Balkanize |
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| 2. Chadify |
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To break into smaller pieces; also chadiferous, a scattering of many small pieces |
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| 3. Chaddy, Chaddily |
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Having many small things (lint balls, strings, etc.) hanging from your clothing, as in 'he dresses chaddily' |
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| 4. Not a chad of truth |
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Replacing the commonplace, 'not a shred of truth,' which in turn replaced the ancient and classical, 'not a shard of truth,' (a shard being a piece of broken pottery) |
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| 5. Chadcentration |
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A mass (or clump) of chad |
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| 6. Chadtize |
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To protest an election, or to poke holes in someone's political argument |
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| 7. Chadulate |
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Chad coalescing; (more broadly, to come together) |
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| 8. Chad Storm |
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Any riot of the well-to-do (usually Republicans) |
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| 9. Chadometer |
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A device to measure what percentage of a chad remains attached to the ballot |
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| 10. Chadgrevation |
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The state of becoming agitated in the extreme when one hears yet another mention of the word chad |
Most frequently spoken word on the Planet: |
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| O.K. |
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Still one of the few examples where a person's initial's live on to become a word. (In this case, antebellum president Martin Van Buren, who was born in Old Kinderhook, New York;
his nickname, Old Kinderhook, quickly evolved to O.K.) An alternate derivation suggests a play on the dialectal pronunciations of "all correct" by editors of the Boston Post in 1839 |
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