Occupied with the Word of the Year 2011

The American Dialect Society, which will announce its 20th annual Word of the Year on Jan. 5, found itself just one in a crowd of word obsessives this year as a formerly obscure venture went mainstream, or at least social media-stream. Words - everyone's texting and hashtagging them.

"I see a social-media effect in terms of interest in talking about word of the year," said Ben Zimmer, editor of the Visual Thesaurus and a leading WOTY guy, head of the Dialect Society's New Words committee (a supercommittee if ever there was one.)

"It's something that people latch on to. When you look at something like occupy as the front-runner, its success is its ability to be modulated, to fit in different environments. Twitter allows for it to spread quickly, boiling down a complex word or movement."

The fact that the name Occupy Wall Street was created before the movement itself (by Adbusters, a Canadian anti-consumerist magazine that bills itself as "culture jammers headquarters") shows the increasing power that words have in the culture, aided by potent social media tools, he said.

"Are you ready for a Tahrir moment?" Adbusters asked in July when it christened its #OWS baby.

Zimmer noted that occupy had "talismanic" power and spread to cities around the globe and even to Sesame Street. (It's the rare consensus choice for Word of the Year 2011 (#WOTY2011).)

"They put something out in the world and it worked," Zimmer said. "It was clear that the word occupy had started to develop in all these unforeseen directions. . . . The key to a successful new word or phrase is that adaptability to different environments."

(To wit: Philadelphia Phillies rightfielder Hunter Pence's wildly successful let's go eat - a.k.a. #letsgoeat - is defined in the Urban Dictionary as: "phrase used in celebration of a feat accomplished through unmatched awkward hustle. Should be said as the second half of a sentence, including what feat is being celebrated." As in, "Good game, let's go eat," its original context, or "Leggings, boots, and a sweater kind of morning. #letsgoeat," a recent tweet from @torribaby.)