Sacrifices and honey-sacrifices, it was merely a ruse
You can tell a person’s personality from the words they use. Neurotics have a penchant for negative words; agreeable types for words pertaining to socialising; and so on. We know this from recordings of people’s speech and from brief writing tasks. Now Tal Yarkoni has extended this line of research to the blogosphere.
For pop-language watchers, January marks the end of the words-of-the-year ritual that has so far given us ‘refudiate’ (New Oxford American Dictionary), ‘austerity’ (Merriam-Webster), and ’spillcam’ (Global Language Monitor). On Friday, members of the American Dialect Society will meet to consider the likes of ‘vuvuzela,’ ‘halfalogue,’ and ‘gleek’ for spots on its 2010 list.
Not all the annual wordfests, however, are celebratory. Since 1976, Lake Superior State University in Michigan has been issuing a list of words and phrases to be banished ‘for mis-use, over-use, and general uselessness.’
