'Misunderestimate' the Top Word of 2002 According to yourDictionary.com.Business Editors DANVILLE Danville. 1 City (1990 pop. 33,828), seat of Vermilion co., E Ill., on the Vermilion River at the Ind. line; inc. 1839. It is a commercial and industrial center in a dairy, farm, and coal area. , Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 25, 2002 Releases Top Word Lists of 2002 including Top Ten Words, People's Names, California California (kăl'ĭfôr`nyə), most populous state in the United States, located in the Far West; bordered by Oregon (N), Nevada and, across the Colorado River, Arizona (E), Mexico (S), and the Pacific Ocean (W). YouthSpeak  This article or section is written like a personal reflection or and may require .Please [ improve this article] by rewriting this article or section in an . , `Bushisms,' Top Phrases, Corporate Buzzwords Below is a list of common buzzwords which form part of the business jargon of Corporate work environments. General Conversation
Internet-related, and more. yourDictionary.com (YDC YDC yourDictionary.com YDC Youth for Development and Cooperation (Netherlands) ), the premier global language portal, today announced the release of its lists of the most important words of 2002, including lists of the overall People's Names, California YouthSpeak, `Bushisms,' Top Phrases, Corporate Buzzwords, Sports, Best & Worse Products and Corporate Name Changes, Internet-related, and more. According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Paul Paul, 1901–64, king of the Hellenes (1947–64), brother and successor of George II. He married (1938) Princess Frederika of Brunswick. During Paul's reign Greece followed a pro-Western policy, and the Cyprus question was temporarily resolved. JJ Payack, chairman, president and The WordMan of yourDictionary.com, "Our lists attempt to capture that evolution and innovations in word choice and usage that tell us something about ourselves." The linguistic Linguistic may refer to:
Words and comments by the staff and visitors at
yourDictionary.com.
Top Ten Words of 2002
Word Comment
1. Misunderestimate What President Bush's opponents have
learned not to do to this president,
in his own word.
2. Survivor This time an uplifting story about
Pennsylvania coal miners and not a
`reality TV' series.
3. Listeria A new danger found lurking in our
food, named for the same man
(Joseph Lister) who invented the
surgical antiseptic now used as a
mouthwash, Listerine.
4. Perp-walk The parading of criminals in
handcuffs before the cameras. It
made the news only as some of the
nation's most distinguished faces
began appearing there.
5. Bandwidth What people are increasingly out of,
a computer term now applied to
modern life.
6. Sniper As around the Beltway. The US
discovered that terrorists do not
have a monopoly on terror.
7. To nasdaq As in, "His fortune was nasdaqued."
The bubble of the mid-to-late`90s
returns to reality and adds a worthy
item to our vocabulary.
8. Warlords The freedom fighters of an earlier
era today are now a threat to
delicate Afghani democracy.
9. Issue A great new euphemism for problem,
fault or any other type of
misstep; we no longer repair the
fault, we simply `resolve' the
issue.
10. Pedophilia Not the love of feet, though it has
rocked the Catholic Church to
its foundations.
Bonus Word
Chatter The `noise' that surrounds
electronic messaging between and
among terrorist organizations.
Top Ten Personal Names of 2002
Name Comment
1. W. (Dubya) George W. Bush remains at the center
of the whirlwind.
2. Trent Lott The Republican's November surprise
thrust him back into the spotlight;
he made the most of it at Strom
Thurmond's 100th birthday party.
3. Bernard Cardinal Law Ousted from the Boston Archdiocese
for his mishandling of the sexual
abuse scandal.
4. Elizabeth Dole After her husband's defeat in his
bid for the presidency, Ms. Dole
returns to Washington as the
Republican Senator from North
Carolina.
5. Rudolph Giuliani Last year's consensus Man of the
Year now reaping millions as a
consultant, speaker and author.
6. The Osbornes MTV's dysfunctional family hit has
introduced Ozzie's clan to the
world.
7. Saddam Hussein The nemesis of former president Bush
who now faces Mr. Bush's son in a
showdown.
8. Osama bin Laden Dead or alive, still making news.
9. Martha Stewart This year has definitely not been
`a good thing'.
10. Al Gore Cleared the way for President Bush
to win in '04 by gracefully
bowing out of contention.
Top Phrases of the Year
Word Comment
1. Threat Fatigue The dulling of the senses to
imminent terrorist threats.
2. Weapons of Mass Destruction (or WMD). The key to whether the US
will stage an aggressive attack on
Iraq.
3. Suicide bomber 2002 was a sad year as record
numbers of Palestinian youth decided
to trade their lives for those of
Israelis.
4. Shoe bomb An idea that might have outperformed
Air Jordans landed Richard Reid in
jail and initiated the shoe search
at US airports.
5. Infectious enronitis A disease of accounting practices
that spread widely throughout US
businesses.
6. Dot communism The conviction that everything on
the Web should be free--or, at
least, paid for by someone else.
Top Ten California YouthSpeak
Word Comment
1. Hottie Object of affection, either
personally or in the cultural
milieu.
2. For shizzle Variation of `for sure', popularized
by rapper Snoop Dogg.
3. Tight Replacing 'cool'.
4. Phat Way cool, as in `rolling phat'.
5. Hella An intensive: hella tight or hella
phat.
6. Wassup This greeting refuses to die,
entering mainstream circles.
7. Flow Dinero, money. Originally from
`cash flow'. Also, `bank' for lots
of flow.
8. Toppins Perfect. In the California version
of Cockney rhyming slang `toppins'
rhymes with Poppins, which cannotes
Mary Poppins who was `perfect in
every way'.
9. Bling Bling The sounds of diamond and gold
jewelry clinking together.
10. Stog Cigarette, short for `stogey'.
Bonus California YouthSpeak Phenomenon of Note
Phenomenon Comment
Up Talking Ending all sentences with a rising
or upward inflection, as if asking a
question.
Top 5 Words Coined By President Bush (Bushisms)
Name Comment
1. Misunderestimate To seriously underestimate.
2. Embetter To make emotionally better
(antonym to embitter).
3. Resignate To resonate as in, "They said this
issue wouldn't resignate with
the People."
4. Foreign-handed To understand the complexity of
geopolitical realities from the
various global perspectives, as in
"I have a foreign-handed foreign
policy".
5. Analyzation To fully study a subject, as in
"This case has had full analyzation
and has been looked at a lot".
Best New Product Names
Name Comment
1. Trikke Scooter Great name for an unconventional
three-wheeled scooter.
2. Nano-Tex High tech fabric that utilizes
nanotechnology to create a
super-smooth, stain-resistant fabric.
3. Twist and Pour Paints The paint container that's designed
to let the user `twist-and-pour' the
paint. The name says it all.
Worst New Product Names
Name Comment
1. A5250 Youth batting helmet. A great
product with a not-so-great name.
2. Jaguar Apple's new version of the OS X
operating system. A internal
code-name that somehow slipped
through Apple's usually expert
marketing maze.
3. Touareg Volkswagen's new SUV named in French
after the nomadic North African
tribe.
Best Corporate Name Change
Name Comment
1. American Home Products To Wyeth, good move. American Home
Products does not connote the
company's core competencies of
synthetic chemistry: molecules,
recombinant proteins and vaccines.
2. Accenture Last year's worst product name looks
better and better the further
Andersen sinks.
Worst Corporate Name Change
Name Comment
1. BearingPoint (or BreakingPoint?) KPMG's attempt
to distance itself from the once
mighty `Big Six' accounting firms.
2. Enron Still doing business as Enron!?
The crisis management rulebook calls
for a clean break with the past to
re-position the company. But then
Enron never was one to follow the
rules.
Top Hot Color Words
Color Comment
1. Cornflower Shade of blue
2. Periwinkle Grey/blue
3. Cerulean Blue
4. Plum Purple
5. Cerise Pink
Top Internet-related Words Moving into Widespread Use
Word Comment
1. Interface To converse as in, "Let's interface".
2. Multi-task To perform several tasks at the same
time.
3. Reboot To start over or begin a new effort.
4. Out of Bandwidth (or RAM). Unable to multi-task.
5. Crash As in `My hard drive crashed'.
Top Numbers
Number Comment
1. 1.4 Number of degrees Fahrenheit
temperature of the Earth has risen
over the last century.
2. 24 The hit Fox series that takes place
in real time.
3. 10X In high tech jargon, the competitive
advantage that separates a company
from its competition.
4. 51 Number of seats held by the
Republicans in the United States
Senate.
5. 10,800 Number of pages in the document
describing Iraq's WMD programs.
Top Sports-related Words
Word Comment
1. BCS College football's Bowl Championship
Series to crown a national
championship in lieu of a playoff.
2. Grand Slam Tiger Woods did not win all four of
golf's major tourneys in the same
year, though he did own all four
trophies at the same time; dubbed the
`Tiger Slam'.
Top Corporate Words or Phrases
Word Comment
1. The Schultz Defense "I know nothing . . . nothing!" From
the running line of the pudgy German
guard in the now defunct TV series
"Hogan's Heroes."
2. Dot-communism The belief that all on-line services
should be free
3. Dematerialization (of documents). Correspondence does
not need to be shredded, if it is
published by the Web and internet.
1. Low-hanging Fruit Easy-to-win accounts.
2. `Rank-and-Yank' Ranking employees annually and then
cutting the lowest 10% loose.
Top Advertising Word
Word Comment
Frothy A fresh or original idea. Supplants
`edgy' which was THE word for a few
years now.
Five Top Misspelled Words
Word Comment
1. Grateful You should be grateful to know that
keeping "great" out of "grateful"
is great.
2. Judgement This word is governed by one of the
rare rules of English orthography,
so why not enjoy it? After [c] and
[g], [e] is retained to indicate
the letter is "soft," i.e.
pronounced like [s] or [j],
respectively.
3. Its/it's The apostrophe marks a contraction
of "it is." Something that belongs
to it is "its."
4. Founder Flounder is a fish, `to founder' is
to run aground.
5. Misspell What is more embarrassing than to
misspell the name of the problem?
Most frequently spoken word on the Planet:
O.K. Still the most popular word in languages around the world.
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