Google named 'word of the decade' by American speech scholars
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Google's dominance of the internet has spread to the world of linguistics with the verb spawned from the brand name being voted word of the decade.
The word “tweet”, derived from sending a short message via Twitter (noun) and the act of sending such a message (verb) was the top word of 2009, the American Dialect Society (ADS) said.
In its annual Word of the Year vote, the society said the use of the word Google, a verb which means to “to search the Internet", came because almost everybody in the world uses the term today.
Other finalists for this year’s Word of the Decade included “9/11”, "Facebook", “blog”, “text”, “Wi-Fi” and “war on terror”.
Nominees for Word of the Year were the suffix “-er”, “fail”, “H1N1” (the virus that causes swine flu) and “Dracula sneeze”, which is covering one’s mouth with the crook of one’s elbow when sneezing.
"Both words are, in the end, products of the Information Age, where every person has the ability to satisfy curiosity and to broadcast to a select following, both via the Internet,” Grant Barrett, chair of the society's new words committee, said of the winning words.