Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Podcast: 2005 Word of the Year

Rest of the world catches up with techies

The Oxford University Press, publishers of the New Oxford American Dictionary, has selected podcast as the Word of the Year for 2005.

Erin McKean, editor in chief of the New Oxford American Dictionary, said: "Podcast was considered for inclusion last year, but we found that not enough people were using it, or were even familiar with the concept. This year it's a completely different story. The word has finally caught up with the rest of the iPod phenomenon."

"Choosing the word of the year is incredibly difficult," said McKean. "Not just because of the enormous amount of data we look at-everything from blogs to technical journals to suggestions sent to dictionaries@oup.com, but because everyone has such strong opinions about what makes a word Word of the Year material."

Oxford University Press defines podcast as "a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player." While the Oxford definition would be considered incorrect by many podcasters, it reflects common usage without being overly technical.

"Podcast" will be added to the next online update of the New Oxford American Dictionary, due in early 2006. It beat out several other words or phrases to be Word of the Year, including bird flu.

To see the other words up for consideration, click here.

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