“Google” Is Word of the Decade

The American Dialect Society has named “google” the word of the decade and “tweet” the word of the year.

This comes after BingBing said that “TwitterTwitter” the most popular word of 2009, and the Oxford dictionary declared“unfriend” (to remove someone as a FacebookFacebook friend) the word of the year.

Notably, “google” is lowercase. It’s not the name of the company; it’s a catch-all term for searching the Internet, whether you use GoogleGoogle, Bing or another search engine. One member of the panel of judges said he thought “blog” would become the word of the decade, but “google” won out in the end.

Characters in TV shows regularly talk about googling one another, and the word is ubiquitous enough that it’s already been stolen as a brand name for toilet paper, among other things.

“Tweet” is society’s word of the year, but Twitter didn’t begin using that word officially until a few months ago. It was used unofficially by most everyone, though. Unlike “Google,” it’s not trademarked.

Read more: http://mashable.com/2010/01/11/google-tweet-word/