“App” Is 2010’s Word of the Year

As technology continues to grow and evolve, so too does the vocabulary needed to describe it. Just think back a decade or so ago when you may not have known what a podcast was or known about blogging. And just a few years ago, many of us didn’t use the word “app” as part of our every day language.

In fact, the word “app” has become such a part of our language that it was recently voted as the Word of the Year for 2010 by the American Dialect Society, beating out “nom, nom, nom” by Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster.

The shortened slang term for a computer or smart phone application was picked by the linguists group as the word that best sums up the country’s preoccupation last year.

“Nom” — a chat-, tweet-, and text-friendly syllable that connotes “yummy food” — was the runner-up. It derives from the Sesame Street character’s sound as he devours his favorite food.

The vote came at a Pittsburgh hotel ballroom during the national conference of the Linguistic Society of America, an umbrella group that includes the Dialect Society. About 120 of the 1,000 conference attendees voted in the “competition” with neither side entirely satisfied.

Critics of “app” said the word was somewhat stale, while proponents said 2010 was the year the word became omnipresent — with one arguing that her elderly mother knows the term, even though the woman doesn’t have any apps.

“Nom” supporters simply liked it’s cheeriness.

Tweet” and “Google” were last year’s “Word of the Year” and “Word of the Decade.”

As with app, tech terms have been among the most popular since the group started the competition in 1990. Some previous winners include “millennium bug” (1997), “information superhighway” (1993), and “web” (word of the 1990s).

Web words are so popular that even the techie prefix “e” — as in e-mail — won in 1998.