According to the Global Language Monitor, a Texas company that tracks word usage on the Internet, the name of the popular microblogging Web site was the most attention-grabbing word of the year.
"In a year dominated by world-shaking political events, a pandemic, the aftereffects of a financial tsunami and the death of a revered pop icon, the word Twitter stands above all other words," said Paul JJ Payack, president of the Global Language Monitor.
According to the group, the 10 top words for 2009 were: Twitter, Obama, H1N1, stimulus, vampire, 2.0, deficit, Hadron, healthcare, transparency
Melanie Kramer, AOL
According to the Global Language Monitor, Twitter was the "Top Word" in 2009.
Meanwhile, the 10 top phrases were: King of Pop, Obama-mania, climate change, swine flu, too large to fail, cloud computing, public option, jai ho, Mayan calendar, God particle
Twitter, a site where users post messages of 140 characters or less, became a household word in America in 2009, with politicians, authors, comedians and everyday Americans joining in droves. But in addition to being a place where millions of users go to say what's on their mind, Twitter proved itself to be an especially useful tool for news gathering, especially in the wake of the protests that followed the Iranian elections. It has also shown itself to be a great place to go to hear unsubstantiated rumors.
But winning the Top Word of 2009 is not, in itself, a sign of staying power. None of the top words (some of which aren't even really words) of the past nine years was able to repeat that honor in the following one. Those are:
2008: Change
2007: Hybrid
2006: Sustainable
2005: Refugee
2004: Incivility
2003: Embedded
2002: Misunderestimate
2001: GroundZero
2000: Chad
So, congratulations, Twitter. Enjoy the honor while it lasts.
