Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2011: Squeezed Middle

From the OUPBlog:

Every year, the dictionaries teams at Oxford University Press in the UK and the US put their heads together and come up with a Word (or Phrase) of the Year. This year, for the first time, both the UK and US teams have agreed on a global Word of the Year: squeezed middle.
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The Word of the Year is a word, or expression, that we feel has attracted a great deal of interest during the year to date. It need not have been coined within the past twelve months and it does not have to be a word that will stick around for a good length of time: it is very difficult to accurately predict which new words will have staying power. And while the Word of the Year has great resonance for 2011, it doesn’t mean that the word will automatically go into any of our English Dictionaries. We always wait to see good evidence that a word or expression will stay the course before we include it in an Oxford dictionary.

Selection of Shortlisted Words (Complete List Included in Blog Post)

• Arab Spring
• Clicktivism
• Crowdfunding
• Gamification
• Occupy
• Tiger mother

Read the Complete Post

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