In the News

Reprinted with permission from The San Francisco Chronicle

Top 10 Words of 2000

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January 02, 2001 San Francisco, California (The Oakland Tribune) - Dimpled, pregnant, hanging or otherwise, "chad" is the top word of 2000.

That's the consensus of the folks at www.yourDictionary.com. The Danville Internet company, whose focus is language and its many uses, has chosen a Top 10 list of words for the year.

Number one is the term that leapt into our national lexicon during the presidential election saga. As the media revealed each new mind-numbing development of the Florida voting debacle, we learned that "chad" refers to the tiny scrap of paper punched out of ballot cards.

"The word was on everybody's lips for weeks," says Paul J.J. Payack, president and C.E.O. of yourDictionary.com.

Following "chad" on the list is, in order, "millennium," "Y2K," "Sydney Olympics," "dot-com," "Elian," "God" (a word invoked repeatedly by George W. Bush and Al Gore in their presidential campaigns), "pelletizing" (a rubber-bonding process at the crux of the Bridgestone/Firestone tire catastrophe), "Intifada" (refers to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) and "Tiger," the first name of the most dominant golfer in the world.

Payack says the list was chosen based on words people used a lot and that had cultural significance. The Internet company received a lot of input on the matter from its Web site visitors - Payack says there are 1.1 million a month - as well as from its panel of academic consultants.

"People care about language," he says. "Everyone has an opinion on it."

Along with the top 10 list, the company picked the top corporate cliches of the year, which include "Time to fish or cut bait," "Think outside the box," "Pushing the envelope" and "Starting from ground zero."

The Internet company was founded five years ago by Robert Beard, Payack's former Russian professor at Bucknell University. The Web site - www.yourDictionary.com - is crammed with word games, grammar tools and 1,528 dictionaries in nearly 250 languages.

Quick tidbit from the Web site: The most frequently spoken word on the planet is "OK."

In other linguistics-related news, CNN.com - noting the top 10 list released by yourDictionary.com - is asking readers to choose the word they are most sick of hearing, from among these choices: "chad," "dot.com," "millennium" and "whassup?"

That last word - which, uttered correctly, should be stretched out in a playfully guttural voice - is leading the contest at the latest viewing. It has garnered 38 percent of the votes from the more than 5,000 people who have responded so far.

In second place, at 34 percent: "chad."