located in San Diego, CA, has released its top word list for 2005 (news). The top words are led by "refugee" and "tsunami". Names are led by "God", "tsunami", "Katrina", and "John Paul II". Included are also musical terms and youthspeak.
The top seven phrases are the following:
- out of the mainstream
- bird flu
- politically correct
- North/South divide
- purple thumb
- climate change and global warming
- string theory
You see that almost all of the words and things that The Reference Frame dislikes are above string theory. The defeat of string theory by the global warming is particularly embarassing. ;-) But the 7th place is not so bad after all.
Concerning political correctness, it is just not the phrase itself that was successful. Many new political correct words were successful, too. For example, the word "failure" was replaced by "deferred success" in Great Britain. On the other hand, the politically incorrect word "refugee" - that many people wanted to replace with "evacuee" - was a winner, too.
Incidentally, Jim Simons, after having discovered Chern-Simons theory and earned billions of dollars from his hedge fun(d), wants to investigate autism.
