The Worst Words of 2012 | The Hot Word | Hot & Trending Words Daily Blog at Dictionary.com ⇢

Although the coinage ‘hashtag’ was dubbed word of the year by the American Dialect Society (who also chronicled my role in that neologism), the folks at Dictionary.com decided hashtag was one of the worst words of 2012:

Hashtag — a Twitter symbol that has grown into an orthographic monster. What began as a “pound sign” or “number sign” and became a method for Twitter users to search tweets with common topics has morphed into the new URL. (Wondering what “URL” stands for? Watch the computer terms slideshow.) See our thorough discussion of the hashtag–and its real name–here.

I think this analysis is weak, and no surprise: Dictionary.com’s The Hot Word column doesn’t publish the name of the authors, which is always a bad sign.

13 January 2013 2
hashtag

Notes

  1. stoweboyd posted this

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Web anthropologist, futurist, author. My focus is the future, and the tectonic forces pushing business, media, and society into an unclear and accelerating future. (More.)

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