Words, words, words!

For those of you that know me, I love expanding my vocabulary, writing, and all things grammarian (henceforth this pretty pointless blog). I found this article on Yahoo and thought I'd share it. If you start hearing me use the word 'plutoed' (I love the word plutonic), please note that it means to disregard something altogether, as Pluto the planet, was disregarded as an official planet, in 2006. To use it in a sentence, "I absolutely plutoed the editor's review of the movie 8 Mile, because I love it nonetheless!". Does that help?

Not so sure about the word 'truthiness', however... It just SOUNDS like a fictitious word! 'Murse', 'flog', and 'macaca' are winners in my book, though. I need to figure out how to fit those in to my everyday vocabulary... :)

Love, Mer

'Plutoed' chosen as '06 Word of the Year

Sun Jan 7, 8:38 PM ET

Pluto is finally getting some respect — not from astronomers, but from wordsmiths.

"Plutoed" was chosen 2006's Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society at its annual meeting Friday.

To "pluto" is "to demote or devalue someone or something," much like what happened to the former planet last year when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto didn't meet its definition of a planet.

"Our members believe the great emotional reaction of the public to the demotion of Pluto shows the importance of Pluto as a name," said society president Cleveland Evans. "We may no longer believe in the Roman god Pluto, but we still have a sense of personal connection with the former planet."

"Plutoed" won in a runoff against "climate canary," defined as "an organism or species whose poor health or declining numbers hint at a larger environmental catastrophe on the horizon."

Other words considered: murse (man's purse), flog (a fake blog that promotes products) and macaca (an American citizen treated as an alien).

Republican former Sen. George Allen (news, bio, voting record) was ahead in his re-election campaign when he said "macaca," which some regard as a racial slur, and "welcome to America" in referring to a U.S.-born man of Indian descent who was volunteering for Allen's opponent. Allen lost to Democrat Jim Webb.

The 117-year-old American Dialect Society comprises linguists, grammarians, historians and independent scholars, among others. Members conduct the vote for fun and not in an official capacity to induct words into the English language.

The society chose "truthiness" as its top word last year. The word is credited to Comedy Central satirist Stephen Colbert, who defined it as "truth that comes from the gut, not books."

Last month, an online survey by dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster declared "truthiness" the word of the year for 2006.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070108/ap_on_re_us/word_of_the_year