Anointing the word that defined ‘06

PHILADELPHIA - Last year, when lexicographical heavyweights Barrett and Barnhart and Glowka and McKean threw their words around the annual meeting of the American Dialect Society - the nation’s wordinistas, the definazis, if you will - they hit upon an inspired choice for 2005 word of the year.

Their pick was truthiness: the word for squishified truth, truth in defiance of factinistas, a word popularized - fetishized, in truth - by Stephen Colbert and his followers. (See www.wikiality.com for the full fetishification.)

Now, a year later, that word is flying high, having just been voted word of the year again in a public vote sponsored by no less than Merriam-Webster, amid grumblings that members of Colbert Nation had engaged in a little ballot-stuffing.

Still, not since the American Dialect Society’s 1998 selection of the prefix e-, as in e-mail, did a winner show such lexicographical legs. But it is unlikely that the society’s vote on Friday in Anaheim, Calif., will reach into the Colbert trough again.

(Though if it did, there are plenty of Colbert-coined choices: superstantial, a mash-up of substantial and superficial. And then there is all that truthiness begat: outraginess, faithiness, churchiness and, that proud American institution, justiness.)

“Our vote had as much to do with the success of the word as Stephen Colbert,” says Grant Barrett, society vice president and editor of the Official Dictionary of Unofficial English. “We may have actually been the ones that made it successful.”

Which might be as good an example of the truthiness concept as any.

Besides, truthiness can actually be found in some early-20th-century dictionaries, so it predates that Colbert guy, who is threatening by virtue of his daily feature “The Word” to upstage these dedicated lexicographers of our day, in much the same way Jon Stewart seems to reign over anchorman land.

In any case, this year’s runaway television hit-inspired word comes courtesy of that other cultural lightning rod, the Food Network’s Rachael Ray. Erin McKean, sometimes known as America’s lexicographical sweetheart and editor of the New Oxford American Dictionary, has created some buzz around the word evoo (pronounced ee-vee-oh-oh), a Rayism for Extra Virgin Olive Oil. (In another anchor term, Barrett nominated fox lips, which he defines as “lips colored and lined with makeup to seem more prominent, said of female anchors on Fox News.”)

But McKean’s top pick for word of the year is the global warming antidotal carbon neutral, a term used by both the Rolling Stones and Rupert Murdoch, he notes. Carbon neutral refers to “calculating your total climate-damaging carbon emissions, reducing them where possible, and then balancing your remaining emissions, often by purchasing a carbon offset.” (Related term: carbon negative.) She also likes dwarf planet, the status the demoted Pluto ended up with. “Carbon neutral is my fault,” McKean says. “I pushed hard for it.”

Other eco-terms showing up on nominating lists include Georgia College and State University English professor Wayne Glowka’s ecosexual, defined as a person choosing dates according to a partner’s green habits. Glowka also put forth nicotini, a tobacco-flavored cocktail for smokeless bars (not to be confused with the momtini, a staple of the late-afternoon play group). Barrett’s eco-word was sharrow (share and arrow), the arrow painted on a roadway to mark a bicycling route.

Glowka’s best-of list this year is heavy on man-words, with one entry devoted to m-, man- and men-compounds (as in moobs, manboobs, murse, man purse, mancation, man crush and mannies, male nannies). “Somebody said we’re having a menaissance, a resurgence of old-fashioned manhood,” Glowka said.

“Grey’s Anatomy” fans popularized the Mc-ization of the language, as in Dr. McDreamy and Dr. McSteamy (from urban dictionary: “... she’s got my McDreamy. And my McDog. She’s got my McLife!”).

On the female side, Nancy Pelosi’s rise to power inspired speaker-in-waiting and, on Grant Barrett’s list, marble ceiling, the political term for a glass ceiling.

Barrett also nominated data Valdez to refer to an accidental release of a large quantity of private data, and the old human directional, to refer to those people who flip and dance with signs to direct people to new homes in California (or, the Jersey version, dress up in costumes and direct people to temporary holiday shops).

From the worlds of military and politics come this year’s defining and redefining of such words as civil war and victory, proffered by David Barnhart, president of the Dictionary Society of North America, and the questioning of the go-to offense of asymmetrical warfare, now being bolstered by a proposed troop surge. Barrett nominated seven-thousand-mile screwdriver, a Pentagon term for micromanaging a situation from afar, with dubious result.

There was Bush’s much-discussed decider, and its immediate transference to the personal sphere. The word that got the most attention that nobody had ever heard of before was macaca, courtesy of U.S. Sen. George Allen of Virginia. The word was named 2006’s most politically incorrect word by the Global Language Monitor, which cited as runners-up global warming denier and herstory (which received 900,000 Google inquiries this year, on the mistaken idea that the word history was gender-based).

Also on the international front, Glowka nominates Axis Envy (North Korea’s envy of attention given to Iran) and Cambodian accessories (Angelina Jolie’s adopted children). He also proffers Mel Gibson as meaning to ostracize (we’ll Mel Gibson you) or to run amok (my computer just Mel Gibsoned). Related term: Mel-down.

Out of UrbanDictionary.com, where hundreds of new words are added every day, come these recent additions: wii-kend, a weekend devoted to playing Nintendo’s Wii, which could lead to Wii-elbow, or a wiilationship (not to be confused with an elationship), or could make you wii-stracted and late for your approximeeting, when you arrange to meet someone only in a general location, with cell phones required to actually find each other.

At that point, you might suffer from one of lexicographer David Barnhart’s top choices for word of the year: partial continuous attention, the mind-set of multitasking, a term apparently coined by former Microsoft executive Linda Stone and discussed by New York Times columnist Tom Friedman in a piece “The Age of Interruption.” (Actually meeting might require that a person possess more than courage.com, a Web word that refers to the kind of courage possessed only in the online world.)

For the younger set, sometimes known as Generation Xbox, out of UrbanDictionary.com, there is gradedigger, defined as a girl who talks to you only for help with her classes, and, from McKean, the moving-up-from-toddler-into-the-twentysomething range, funner. Which is what outings are when you engage in pregaming, consuming alcohol before a sporting event or party, especially one where alcohol will be limited or banned.

Looking to the future is Marian Salzman, not a lexicographer, but a trendspotter, who predicts that the top buzzwords of 2007 will be adultescence (a growing demographic of young people not quite on their own; see also: kidults), brand sluts (consumers who flit from one brand to the next), and gastroporn (who use, naturally, outrageous amounts of evoo).

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For the full nominating lists from Barrett and others, go to www.AmericanDialect.org.

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(Philadelphia Inquirer correspondents Tanya Barrientos and Carrie Rickey contributed to this report.)