**As we enter the last few weeks of the 2000s, the Magazine is enlisting readers to tell the story of the last 10 years, based on five themes. British wordsmith Susie Dent begins the series with some suggestions for “words of the decade”.**Language, as an American lexicographer once neatly put it, “is an uncompromising mirror… an untouched record of the thoughts, feelings, successes, failures, and intent of the people”.
WHAT IS ‘PORTRAIT OF THE DECADE’ ALL ABOUT
- We want readers to help us to create a portrait of the decade
- Each day this week we focus on a different theme - words, people, news, objects and culture
- Readers can make their suggestions using the form below
- Try to be original
- It is not a vote - an independent expert (see below) will pick 20 in each category
- The final 100 things about the Noughties will be revealed on Monday, 14 December
- An artist will illustrate them on a colour poster for readers
Our guidelines for Portrait of the Decade
We are what we say, and as a shorthand summary of a single event or period in time, a word or phrase that came into prominence is hard to beat.
This opening decade of the 2000s - for which the nickname Noughties ultimately pipped all others - has generated a wealth of new words, and their resonance is likely to provoke strong memories.
Some of them are inextricably tied up with single events: 9/11 has become the only reference necessary to describe the terrorist attacks against America in 2001, events which spawned many further expressions, including axis of evil and moral crusade as well as allegations of sexing up and dodgy dossiers. More recently the current Great Recession has spawned a bemusing lexicon full of toxic debt and quantitative easing.
Neologisms - brand new words - speak strongly for the times they were coined for, even the fun ones. Bling characterised for many the opening years of the century, the perfect description of a celebrity- (or nonebrity-) obsessed culture intent on being as flashy as the people it idolized. Social networking has added a new flavour to our language: Twitter alone has given us tweets, twitts - even tweet-ups among the Twitterati.
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Poking, to take just one word from the Facebook lexicon, is not a new word - it has simply taken on a new sense.
In fact many, if not most, of our “new” words are born of the same process of reinvention, including what is undoubtedly one of the most prominent words of the century thus far: chav. Once a Romany word meaning “child” (chavi) more than 150 years ago, it was relaunched quite spectacularly in 2005 when, in the UK, it became one of the most powerful (and derogatory) social labels in recent memory.
Some little-known terms also gained higher profile: as 2004 ended, the Asian tsunami forced a word unknown to many into the everyday vocabulary of millions.
MEET THE EXPERT
Paul JJ Payack is the founding president of Texas-based Global Language Monitor (GLM) and yourDictionary.com. GLM documents, analyses and tracks trends in language across the world, with a particular emphasis upon global English and its impact on politics, culture and technology. Mr Payack’s latest book, A Million Words and Counting, is a celebration of English as a global language.
Green has been indisputably the colour of the decade, leaving its carbon footprint across its years and prompting, among so much else, the arrival of Britain’s first eco-towns. The threat of ecological disaster has been joined this year by fears of swine flu - itself overtaking the nightmare possibilities of H5N1 - and of an epidemic of globesity.
These are just some of the words characterising the last 10 years - there are many more to choose from and this is where you come in.
We want you to choose your word or words of the decade.
There is some flexibility about what kind of words and phrases are allowed, as long as they are actually used. Proprietary names are also fine - we are, after all, the iPod generation.
Initialisms like WMD are acceptable, but people’s names are not admissible (you can have your say about people of the decade on Tuesday), unless they transcend their names, as in Bushism.
Otherwise, the choice is all yours.
Tell us your word or words of the decade using the formfurther up the page.