Fiscal cliff could join tweet, occupy, and app as Words of the Year, as designated by the American Dialect Society.
Allan Metcalf, a professor of English and chairman of the humanities and fine arts division at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, has been the executive secretary of the society since 1981.
“We go through different categories of words: Most Likely to Succeed, Least Likely to Succeed, Most Outrageous, and so on. We have a vote by a show of hands. After we’ve gone through all of the different categories, we come back to the Word of the Year,” says Metcalf.
“It’s not a scientific thing, exactly, but it is a knowledgeable kind of thing. I came up with this idea in imitation of Time magazine’s Person of the Year.”
http://www.americandialect.org/
http://www.allanmetcalf.com/
(Posted 12-11-2012 at 12:30pm, Illinois Radio Network)