INTERNET CULTURE RULES the world, according to a list of the top 20 words of 2013.
‘Fail’, ‘meme’ and ‘twerking’ all make the list compiled by the Global Language Monitor – which is topped by internet failure code ’404′.
The top name of this year was Pope Francis, with Kate Middleton and NSA whistleblower Ed Snowden also in the top ten.
Some 1,025,109 different words will be in use by English speakers by January 1 next year, the GLM projects. This is an increase of 5,400 on last January’s figure of 1,019,729.
The Global Language Monitor tracks online language use across the English-speaking world, which it says now includes around 1.83 billion people.
Here’s the top 20 list:
- 404
- Fail
- Hashtag
- @Pontifex
- The Optic (as in the optics of a political debate)
- Surveillance
- Drones
- Deficit
- Sequestration
- Emancipate
- Filibuster
- Nano
- Twerking
- Deadlock
- Franken- (as a prefix to other words)
- Meme
- Stalemate
- The Cloud
- Phony
- Comet
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