The results are in!
In October, Ask Oxford invited you to vote for the word you love to hate from 2008. The survey, 'Out with the New!' invited readers to choose from one of Countdown's Susie Dent's word suggestions, or to submit another word of their choice. Susie's word suggestions were: Credit Crunch, Medalling, Visuacy, Freemale and Deleveraging. Over 1000 people took part in the survey, and the results are now in!
Ask Oxford readers voted...Freemale as the most unpopular word of 2008.
Here are the official results:
Freemale - 40.7%
Credit Crunch - 22.2%
Medalling - 16.5%
Visuacy - 10.4%
Deleveraging - 10.2%
There were also some other interesting words submitted. Read on to find out Susie Dent's comments on these and on the results.
'Ask anyone for their favourite word and their eyes immediately light up: we all have one, and love hearing other people's too. Inevitably, then, the flip side is true: we all have a word or phrase (and often more than one) that induces an immediate wince: the audio equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard. The poll results show that our linguistic antennae are as tuned in as ever.
The 'winner', or perhaps more appropriately put, the 'loser', is 'freemale', by a big margin. The term, for an unmarried woman, is one more in a long line of marketing confections designed to create an immediate debate rather than any lasting addition to the language. To my ears it sounds horribly forced and concocted, and it seems a lot of people feel the same. I'm almost loathe to give it another dose of publicity oxygen but let's hope it fizzles before the year is out.
Credit crunch, sadly, is also something we want to push out of the door, in word as well as deed. It has become a multi-purpose descriptor of almost anything to do with our current predicament and, although not new (it was coined back in the 60s), it deserves to fade away for another forty years. Other terms you rightly hate are 'deleveraging', 'Main Street' (as in 'from Wall Street to Main Street'), and 'sub-prime'. Other types of business jargon don't escape: 'blamestorming', the ubiquitous 'mega-' intensifier, 'downsizing', 'gaining traction' and 'granularity' are all singled out for a grumble.
There are some lovely further suggestions from the poll respondents. Some of you hate the 'metrosexual' formula (we've had 'retrosexuals', 'machoxexuals', 'ecosexuals', and this year comes the 'gastrosexual'. Still more hated 'Joe the Plumber', the sobriquet chosen by John McCain to symbolize the American middle class who he believed would suffer as a result of Barack Obama's tax plans. Entrepreneurs, McCain claimed, represented by the real Joe the Plumber, Joe Wurzelbacher, would lose out. Who knows whether the shorthand will survive: in Britain we've had Mondeo Man, schoolgate mum, and Do It All Woman, while in the US 'moms' can be of the 'hockey', 'soccer', and 'helicopter' variety: many of which also came on your list of pet bugbears.
You hated 'medalling' too, and it did sound rather odd to hear that Team GB were 'meddling' (for that's how it sounded) in Beijing. It's one of those nouns that we turn into verbs in an effort to make them sound more dynamic. Ugly it may be, but perhaps not as much as the verb 'to podium', which was also used on more than one occasion in Beijing. London in 2012 may yet see some linguistic as well as sporting challenges.
The poll results make for a fascinating and revealing read. I agree with almost all of the words picked (well, except for 'bouncebackability' which I confess I love for its onomatopoeia). As a collection the words give a telling insight into our moods and preoccupations - even as we hate them.'
We'd like to thank everyone who took part in the survey. The five winners of the prize draw will receive a copy of Susie's new book Words of the Year.
Susie Dent
17/12/08
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