10 top words of 2010

The top words of 2010 come in with Spillcam as the Top Word, Anger and Rage the Top Phrase and Chinese Leader Hu Jintao the Top Name.

Here is the top 10 words:

  1. Spillcam - The BP Spillcam instantly beamed the immensity of the Gulf Spill around the world, shocking not only environmentalists but BP’s own staff and the US government, too.
  2. Vuvuzela - The bright plastic horns buzzed incessantly at the South African World Cup.
  3. The Narrative - The Language Monitor says “the Narrative” has been used at least since 1845, it’s become a key word in the political arena, almost replacing the need for a party’s platform.
  4. Refudiate - Former Alaskan Governor and Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin unofficially coined this word, apparently a conflation of “refute” and “repudiate.”
  5. Guido and Guidette - New Jersey stereotypes presented themselves strongly on MTV’s The Jersey Shore, which made these two terms shoot up in prominence.
  6. Deficit - Unfortunately, this word was on the lips of many around the world as economies of most of the developed world suffered.
  7. A tie for Snomagedden and Snowpocalypse. Record snowfalls in the East Coast of the United States and Northern Europe led to the creation of new words to describe their ferociousness.
  8. 3-D - Three-dimensional movies meant box office bucks, but some consumer products like toothpaste now use the term “3D” to describe their “robustness.”
  9. Shellacking - President Obama used this word to describe the “old-fashioned thumpin’” in George W. Bush’s words, to describe what the Democrats receive in the 2010 US Midterm elections.
  10. Simplexity - A paradox of simplifying complex ideas in order to make them easier to understand, though this sometimes only adds to their complexity.


The Language Monitor documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language across the world, but especially in Global English.

“Our top words this year come from an environmental disaster, the World Cup, political malapropisms, new senses to ancient words, a booming economic colossus, and a heroic rescue that captivated the world for days on end. This is fitting for a relentlessly growing global language that is being taken up by thousands of new speakers each and every day,” said Paul JJ Payack, President of The Global Language Monitor.