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‘404’ is most popular word of 2013
An annual survey of the English-speaking world’s “top words” has seen ‘404’ (“the
near-universal numeric code for failure on the global Internet”) take the
top spot in 2013. The survey, carried out by Global Language Monitor,
doubles down on this somewhat pessimistic take on the year’s events by
ranking ‘fail’ as the second most popular word.
Third and fourth place (‘hashtag’ and ‘@pontifex’,
respectively) both pay tribute to the continuing visibility and impact of
social media, with the latter (the Pope’s Twitter handle) suggesting that
even more venerable institutions can gain a lot from just a little bit of
internet literacy. The rest of the survey (which is collated by trawling
print and online media, social networks and blogs for the most frequently
used words) provides a handy reference guide to the topics that have got us
most worried in the last months.
‘Surveillance’ comes in at numbers six thanks to
revelations about western democracies spying on their citizens, with
‘drones’ following close behind at number seven —reminding us that technology’s
capacity to watch from a distance sometimes includes lethal measures.
‘Financial woes’ take the number eight and nine
spots with ‘deficit’ and ‘sequestration’ (the latter referring to spending
cuts in the US) while government incompetency also ranks highly:
‘filibuster’ (a delaying tactic for legislative bodies) comes in at number
11 and ‘deadlock’ at number 14.
Unsurprisingly, issues surrounding technology also
featured prominently: ‘nano-‘ and ‘Franken-’ (numbers 12 and 15) are both
prefixes suggesting technology spinning out of control while more innocent
topics also made an appearance —‘meme’ came in at number 16 and ‘The Cloud’
at number 18. Deciding whether to place the thirteenth most popular word,
‘twerking’, in the ‘sinister’ or ‘harmless’ camp is more of a matter of
taste
THE INDEPENDENT
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