A ‘Salty’ Word With a Promising Future
The American Dialect Society picks its Most Likely to Succeed word
Last week, the American Dialect Society held its 25th Word of the Year proceedings at its annual conference in Portland, Ore. As chairman of the New Words committee, I presided over the vote.
The lion’s share of attention went to a new category: Most Notable Hashtag, for words and phrases preceded by a hash mark (#) to organize conversation on Twitter and elsewhere. The winner of the hashtag category, #blacklivesmatter, went on to...