American Dialect Society Chooses "Plutoed" as Word of the Year

At its annual meeting Friday in California, the American Dialect Society announced that the word "plutoed" has been chosen as the Word of the Year for 2006. Last year the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided that Pluto didn’t really meet its definition of what a planet is supposed to be, so little Pluto has its planet status stripped away.

Now the planet has regained a little of its former status by virtue of its name being morphed into a word. To "pluto" is to demote or devalue someone or something. According to Cleveland Evans, the president of the society, "Our members believe the great emotional reaction of the public to the demotion of Pluto shows the importance of Pluto as a name. We may no longer believe in the Roman god Pluto, but we still have a sense of personal connection with the former planet."

"Plutoed" was chosen the winner in a runoff race against the term "climate canary," which was defined as "an organism or species whose poor health or declining numbers hint at a larger environmental catastrophe on the horizon."

The American Dialect Society is made up of linguists, grammarians, scholars, historians, and other language-loving people. The annual voting for Word of the Year is conducted for entertainment, and is not intended to induct words into the English language. Some of the other words considered for 2006 included "flog" (a fake blog that only serves to advertise products) and "murse" (a man’s purse).

The word "macaca," meaning an American citizen who is being treated as an alien, was also considered. Former Republican Sen. George Allen was winning in his re-election campaign when he said the word "macaca," which some people consider to be a racial slur. He also said "welcome to America" when speaking about a man of Indian descent who was volunteering for Allen’s opponent, Democrat Jim Webb, who won the election.