Friday, April 18, 2014

Mustafa Tahir : Emoji, Futebol, and Ghost Plane lead the top trending Words of 2014

Emoji, Futebol, and Ghost Plane lead the Top Trending Words and Phrases of 2014, according to the current word trends in global English being tracked by the Global Language Monitor.   This is a preliminary to GLM’s twelfth annual Word of the Year rankings that will be released at year-end.

“Not only is the English language adding a new word every 98 minutes, but it is also expanding the basis of word creation. The alphabet, itself, is now expanding beyond letters to numbers + (emoticons) diacritical marks + emoji (picture words),” said Paul JJ Payack, chief word analyst, the Global Language Monitor.

The Top Trending Words of 2014 are listed below  (Rank, Word, and Comment).

Emoji — Smilies beware!  The Emojis are now here.  In 500 years people will look back on the creation of a new alphabet:  Letters + numbers + (emoticons) diacritical marks + emoji (picture words).
Futebol — Ready or not, the World Cup of Futebol, Futbol, Football, and Soccer is hurtling toward Brasil
Climate Change —  Two interesting points to add to the debate: 1) The Earth is now approaching the temps of the Medieval Warm Period circa 1100 c.e., and 2) 8,000 years ago oceans were some 100 meters lower than present level.
Ghost Plane — Malaysian Flight 360, now has echoes of the 17th c. ‘ghost ship’, the ‘Flying Dutchman’.
Inflation — OK, so the Universe expanded a gazillion times faster than the speed of light is now a fact.  Way Cool.
Denier — An ugly new addition to the trending words list as it has become an evermore present invective with sinister overtones (fully intended).
Mid-Term Elections — The Perpetual Campaign of the US rolls into 2014, a mere speedbump on the way to ’16.
Crimea — Remember,  Charge of the Light Brigade though highly celebrated, was an unmitigated disaster.
Pontiff — Francis keeps upending convention and papal protocol.
Conscious De-Coupling — Oh Gwyneth Paltrow, what hath thou wrought to the language?
Quinquennium — Or lustrum (either way five-year periods) — preparing for decade-and-a-half terminology as 2015 looms.
The Great War — The centennial of World War I begins four years of soulful commemorations — as the forces it unloosed ripple into (and most probably through) the 21st c.
Blood Moon — Four total eclipses of the Moon in an 18-month span.  Not yet referred to as the  Lunar-aplyspe — but the year is young.
V. V. Putin — Proving to no longer be a Pootie-Poot (etymology unknown), the nickname of George W. Bush bestowed on him.
Chinese —  All things  Chinese are (still) on the rise  Western Powers should be acclimated to this by now.Source GLOBAL LANGUAGE MONITOR

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