Eat your heart out H1N1, gatecrashers and Aretha’s hat. According to Global Language Monitor — an algorithms company who used their Predictive Quantities Indicator to find their results — “Twitter” is the most-used word of 2009. (A sampling of runner-ups: Obama, stimulus, outrage, and vampire.)
It’s not really that much of a surprise, considering how many news outlets have consistently referred to Twitter in order to gauge viewer opinions about everything from the Iranian presidential election to Anderson Cooper’s necktie choices. Though, admittedly, it is a bit hard to believe that the leader of the free world was surpassed by a social networking site mostly used to broadcast the amount of Doritos crumbs currently resting on one’s shirt.
Far more entertaining is Global Language Monitor’s list of top phrases of 2009, which is topped, naturally, by “King of Pop.” But when folks weren’t thinking about Michael Jackson, their minds were at the movies: Slumdog Millionaire‘s “Jai Ho!” and 2012‘s “Mayan Calendar” are on the list as well.
Surprised by these results, PopWatchers? Has “Twitter” dominated your vocabulary? (As an avid LOLcat fan, I would say the word I used most this year is “nom.”) Do you think Twitter will continue its media domination, or fade away next year when the next social networking phenom hits the Interwebs? And see Global Language Monitor’s complete lists after the jump.
Top Words of 2009:
1. Twitter
2. Obama
3. H1N1
4. Stimulus
5. Vampire
6. 2.0
7. Deficit
8. Hadron
9. Healthcare
10. Transparency
11. Outrage
12. Bonus
13. Unemployed
15. Cartel
The Top Phrases of 2009
1. King of Pop
2. Obama-mania
3. Climate Change
4. Swine Flu
5. Too Large to Fail
6. Cloud Computing
7. Public Option
8. Jai Ho!
9. Mayan Calendar
10. God Particle
The Top Names of 2009
1. Barack Obama
2. Michael Jackson
3. Mobama
4. Large Hadron Collinder
5. Neda Agha Sultan
6. Nancy Pelosi
7. M. Ahmadinejad
8. Hamid Karzai
9. Rahm Emmanuel
10. Sonia Sotomayor
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