The Lingo Tango: 2009 Lexicon Gone Wild

by Helen Vollmer
Founder and CEO, Vollmer Public Relations

Sunday morning found me curled up with my cup of coffee and my New York Times (Dec. 20 edition) laughing out loud.  The article was about the buzzwords of 2009.  Some, like octomom, I expected to see.  But others, like aporkalypse (undue worry in response to swine flu, e.g., removing unnecessary kisses from a Mexican telenovela) provided glee and delight.

Others that particularly caught my eye were:

• Birther - a person who believes Obama wasn’t born in the U.S., so can’t be president
• Botax - a proposed levy on cosmetic procedures
•  Jeggings - jean leggings
• Green shoots - signs of an economic recovery

I love this stuff!  Because as much as those in our offices would tell you that I’m a stick in the mud for grammatical correctness and following appropriate journalistic style, language is meant to evolve and change to better describe what and how humans need to communicate.  Apes may groom each other and butterflies may migrate, but we change our words like we do our clothes to express ourselves.  And, that’s pretty cool!

Certainly, technology has advanced lexicon in new and different ways—from bytes to blogs to tweet-ups, many neologisms (new words) have emerged from how we find, gather and communicate information.  But technology, isn’t the only bearer of new language—think of snarky, staycation or locavore.  And this has been going on since man could talk.  Consider that Elizabethan semantic freewheeler, William Shakespeare, who brought the likes of excellent, lonely and leapfrog, among others, to everyday use.

My favorite of the year came to my attention from our 21 year old daughter. A fomo (the acronym for the fear of missing out) is a person who is constantly focusing just beyond the conversation she or he is currently having.

By the way, the American Dialect Society will select its Word of the Decade in January.  In fact, there’s still time to nominate a word by sending an email to Grant Barrett at woty@americandialect.org before January 7, 2010.

Creating new words and phrases to better express ourselves is just human nature.  The operative word here is “creating.”  We evolve, we change, and we want to give meaning to our lives.  As a species, our use of language truly distinguishes us.

As we enter the next decade, we need to keep up the good work in finding new expressions that provide clear meaning to our intentions.  And if we can’t, then perhaps aporkalypse will come to have a new meaning—the return to the use of Pig Latin when your cell phone dies, you can’t text, and you have to verbally communicate.

*You can follow Helen on Twitter @goofydooly or friend her on Facebook!