PR salutes “Web 2.0”: The Millionth Word in the English Language

As a public relations professional at a leading New York City-based PR firm, words are important to me. (For the record, words are also important to my boss, Ken Makovsky, who once devoted an entire entry in his “My Three Cents” blog to his distress over the challenge to the English language posed by texting shorthand.)

So I paid attention when The Global Language Monitor(GLM), announced that — on June 10 at 6:22 am EST — the English language had acquired its one millionth word: “Web 2.0” — defined as “the next generation of web products and services, coming soon to a browser near you.”

Among the finalists for the 1,000,000th word: “Jai Ho,” “N00b,” “slumdog,” cloud computing” and “carbon neutral.”

For the record, at its current rate, English generates about 14.7 words a day, or one every 98 minutes. Based in Austin, TX, GLM documents, analyzes and tracks language trends worldwide, with a particular emphasis upon Global English.