The Millionth English Word: Web 2.0

1. mcs212
   June 10th, 2009 at 3:58 pm

   Web 2.0: "Coming soon?"

2. Mike S
   June 10th, 2009 at 4:03 pm

   This list is a bit brain dead. Four of the "words" are actually phrases, this can be noted by the fact that they are two words with a space between them, not a single word. Two of them included digits as part of them, words are made from letters. Granted n00b can be spelled a variety of ways but they choose a numeric way. And one of the "words" is both non-English and a phrase. In the write up itself it states it's Hindi, not English. "Hola", spanish for Hello, is commonly used in english speaking areas too, doesn't make it an english word.

3. oxyacetylene
   June 10th, 2009 at 4:12 pm

   you're retarted!!!!!!most of these terms aren't in use!!! go back to india!alex I love the site but it has been going downhill the last few months!

4. Mike S
   June 10th, 2009 at 4:15 pm

   Oxyacetylene:

   Calling Alex retarded is a bit inflammatory. (It's just a list of "words".)

5. onecrazymomma
   June 10th, 2009 at 6:04 pm

   technically, though, oxyacetylene called alex retarTed, which just means he's very tasty, like a tart. or is it he's just scandalous, like a tart? or maybe just plain tart?

6. mcbruiser
   June 10th, 2009 at 8:14 pm

   Hey, was that speech bubble created at speechable.com?

7. kelly
   June 10th, 2009 at 9:15 pm

   this could be one of the dumbest things i have ever seen on the internet... and that's a long, long list. please don't give idiots like this any further attention.

8. Tempscire
   June 10th, 2009 at 10:31 pm

   Mike S, re:the Hindi phrase-- English has adopted many, many foreign words. Do you think "shampoo" ought to be stricken from the dictionary? (Of course, I hear the word "shampoo" infinitely more often than I've heard *re-checks list* "Jai ho.")

   In general...I'm torn. My first impulse is to call this a stupid list full of stupid non-words, most of which will be forgotten within the decade.

   On the other hand, there's no "natural law" governing language or what can be considered proper words. If we collectively decide "n00b" actually counts as a "real" word, numbers and all, then it is. "Okay"/"OK" would not, at this point in time, be contested as a word, nor would "puking," "eyeball," or any other Shakespeare-invented word. I'm sure a Victorian would be stunned at the claptrap we utter compared to his more formal style and vocabulary that we no longer use.

9. Mike S
   June 10th, 2009 at 11:01 pm

   Tempscire:

   In general I agree with you. English is full of words made up and borrowed from other languages. Mostly borrowed from many languages. My main issue was that most of these are phrases. The smaller point was the "jai ho" one, as that is not a very common phrase (at least I've never heard it before, granted that's really not saying much). For a borrowed word to be considered english I think it should have to be significantly more common. Perhaps it's well on it's way to becoming english but I don't think it is there yet. But that is merely my opinion and things like this are heavily subject to opinions when it comes to them being "right" or "correct". Pinning it down definitively is hard to do.

10. Christophe
    June 10th, 2009 at 11:54 pm

    Langage is in perpetual evolution especially confronted with other langages : the meaning behind a word, its general or peculiar use, will make a big difference in translation. I'm being asked regularly to translate English words from and to French : it's not as easy. Most simple words are easy (red, blue, car, fork...) but conveying the real meaning of a word embraces its substance and the culture where it's coming from : how to translate simply "clusterf*ck" without understanding its military origins? (why did THAT word came to my mind?!!)

    Another exammple is the French word "frileux", well known by our lady friends, which means 'subjective to the cold'. No English word for that! So...
    Neatorama-ers, let's create the 1,000,001st word! What would be "frileux" in English?

11. Christophe
    June 10th, 2009 at 11:58 pm

    argh ; translation mistake lol
    sensitive to cold, not subjective

12. Jared
    June 11th, 2009 at 3:34 am

    I have to agree with Mike S, if there is a space in there it is a phrase, not a word. Web 2.0, Cloud Computing, Carbon Neutral, Slow Food, all most definitely phrases as opposed to words, and none of the words contained within those phrases are new.
    I'm shocked at how much attention GLM have managed to drum up with this none-news. I refuse to acknowledge that a word is part of the ENGLISH language because an AMERICAN company deigns to tell me it is so. Unless it's in the Oxford English Dictionary, it doesn't count on my Scrabble board

13. KG
    June 11th, 2009 at 4:11 am

    The English term for "frileux" is "nipping-out."

    ha ha

14. gtron
    June 11th, 2009 at 7:12 am

    2, ., and 0, are not "words" -
    this reminds me of when the internet 'gurus' invented .biz for the overflow of .com - what a bunch of twits

15. Sue Dunham
    June 11th, 2009 at 7:19 am

    I agree. What a silly gimmick. "Web two point oh" is not a word and also has been in fairly common use for several years. These guys are full of it.

16. Allen T Garvin
    June 12th, 2009 at 12:29 am

    Web 2.0 new? This reminds me of a client RFC to our department, asking how we planned to grow and adapt to new technologies, including patching and migrating to "web 3.0". We were nearly rolling in the floor over that.

17. Mike Brown
    June 12th, 2009 at 12:21 pm

    It's a joke people! Lighten up

18. James Curran
    June 15th, 2009 at 7:25 am

    First of all, dictionaries don't list "words", they list "lexicographical terms" -- terms may be made up of multiple words, if the meaning of the unit can not be derived merely from the meaning of the separate words.
    The first page of the American Heritage Dictionary list s "Aaron's Rod" (an archetectural term).
    "Slow Food" would qualify; "Cloud computing" maybe not.

    The main problem with the list is that none of those terms have been added to the language in the last couple days. The newest are probably "greenwash" or "sexting" and they've even been around for about 6 months. "Web 2.0" has been part of the language for about 4 years, and "n00b" may be entering it's second decade.

    The actual 1,000,000th word will probably not enter common usage for 3 months to a year (if it even enters common usage).

19. Philip Daniels
    June 16th, 2009 at 9:42 pm

    @James Curran - the issue is the so called "millionth" word, not what dictionaries are, or are not.

    These are the best online definitions of "word" I can find, they are from the online Macquarie Dictionary (Australia), interestingly the online Websters & Oxford dictionaries only list the first one

    1. a sound or a combination of sounds, or its written or printed representation, used in any language as the sign of a concept.

    2. a grammatical element which can stand alone as an utterance, not divisible into two or more parts; thus boy and boyish, but not -ish or boy scout, the former being less than a word, the latter more.

    It seems to me that the first would allow for two or more elements as in Carbon Neutral, whilst the second would certainly not. Even tho' I'm an Australian I'd say that the second definition would be closer to most peoples understanding of what a "word" actually is.

    Things like Web 2.0, Slow Food, Clown Computing etc might be said to be "labels" as in - a short word or phrase of description for a person, group, movement, idea etc.

20. Philip Daniels
    June 16th, 2009 at 10:15 pm

    @Tempscire wrote - "a Victorian would be stunned at the claptrap we utter compared to his more formal style"

    I doubt they would, Shakespeare wrote 300+ years ago in Elizabethan English, whereas the Victorian era was mere 110 years ago. Most people find the language of Dickens, Thackeray, Georg Eliot, the Bronte sisters and Lewis Carroll much easier going than Shakespeare.

    That said, Tempscire may well be correct, Victorians might be shocked to find that we don't all write like Macaulay, but nor did they write like Bacon, Spenser, Marlow or indeed Shakespeare.

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