Hashtag!

Go figure. I had predicted fiscal cliff, but the American Dialect Society went with the pop technology term instead of the political catchphrase. No arguments here. No objections.

Honestly, I only figured out what a hashtag even means quite recently. It’s so new, I still get a red squiggle underneath the word when I type it. I thought YOLO (You Only Live Once) had a good chance, but hashtag sneaked up on me. Didn’t see it coming.

In case you don’t know, a hashtag is a Twitter convention, now being used on other social media sites. It’s a hash or pound sign (#) followed immediately (no space) by a word or phrase. The convention helps organize conversations or mark a topic for easy searching. Honestly, most people I know who use it have no idea what a hashtag really does.

The article published by the American Dialect Society is here.

An explanation of the hashtag concept is here, by Ben Zimmer at Vocabulary.com.

My info graphic, updated with the new word, is below…

Congratulations! #2012WOTY

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