A Word a Year: 1905-2005
In the following extract from fanboys and overdogs, Susie Dent selects a single word to represent each of the last hundred years. Can you guess what the word of the year for 2005 is?
A survey of a century's worth of new words is as surprising as it is revealing. Language has the ability to reinvent itself as circumstances require, and many of the words we consider wholly modern have in fact been resurrected from an earlier era.
The following chronology selects a single word for each year in the last hundred. Not all of them bear heavy historical significance, but each captures something of the cultural vibrancy of the year in which it was coined.
1905 peace economy
1906 tyrannosaurus
1907 Boy Scout
1908 Dow Jones
1909 jazz
1910 wimmin
1911 flight-path
1912 rinky-dink
1913 migrant labor
1914 crossword
1915 trench fever
1916 blimp
1917 triple vaccine
1918 D-day
1919 white collar (adjective)
1920 new poor
1921 quantum energy
1922 yobbo
1923 environmentalism
1924 nuclear family
1925 blind date
1926 haute cuisine
1927 national lottery
1928 boogie-woogie
1929 Wall Street Crash
1930 Intelligence Service
1931 Filofax
1932 brown shirt: a Nazi
1933 supermarket
1934 supernova
1935 boondoggle: a trivial undertaking
1936 bingo
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1937 spam
1938 private eye
1939 tickety-boo
1940 Jim Crow: a rooftop spotter of enemy aircraft.
1941 daisy-chainer
1942 zoot suit
1943 Laundromat
1944 boot camp
1945 cold war
1946 Gulag
1947 pop single
1948 cappuccino
1949 aromatherapy
1950 McCarthyism
1951 fast food
1952 spycatcher
1953 UFO
1954 double helix
1955 tikka
1956 tax-and-spend
1957 the Pill
1958 sex kitten
1959 Barbie
1960 rave (noun)
1961 game show
1962 bossa nova
1963 machine-washable
1964 disco
1965 nanny state
1966 center fold
1967 sleaze
1968 Klingon
1969 moonwalk
1970 Third World
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1971 gonzo
1972 dole queue
1973 deconstruct
1974 baby boomer
1975 refusenik
1976 Thatcherite
1977 makeover
1978 me generation
1979 nouvelle cuisine
1980 Reaganomics
1981 street cred
1982 Valspeak: short for 'Valley Speak'
1983 theme pub
1984 body-popping
1985 Prozac
1986 to multitask
1987 smiley
1988 vogueing
1989 luvvly jubbly
1990 smackdown
1991 hotdesking
1992 poptastic
1993 fashionista
1994 dotcom
1995 ladette
1996 alcopop
1997 blamestorming
1998 text message
1999 ASBO
2000 speed dating
2001 war on terror
2002 SARS
2003 freedom fries: an alternative term for 'French fries', chosen by some Americans as a critique of the French protest against the invasion of Iraq.
2004 podcasting
2005 su doku
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Susie Dent
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