1. Spillcam — The BP Spillcam instantly beamed the immensity of the Gulf Spill around the world to the dismay of environmentalists, BP’s PR staff and the President.
2. Vuvuzela — Brightly colored plastic horns that first came to prominence at the South African World Cup.
3. The Narrative – Though used at least since The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass in 1845, ‘The Narrative’ has recently been gaining traction in the political arena, virtually replacing the need for a party’s platform. (Cf. to ‘truthily’.)
4. Refudiate — Conflation of “refute” and “repudiate” (un)officially coined by Sarah Palin.
5. Guido and Guidette — Hey! All things Jersey are hot, capish? (Actually, capisci in standard Italian.)
6. Deficit – A growing and possibly intractable problem for the economies of most of the developed world.
7. Snowmaggedden (and ‘Snowpocalypse’) — Portmanteau words linking ‘snow’ with ‘apocalypse’ and ‘armageddon’, used to describe the record snowfalls in the US East Coast and Northern Europe last winter.
8. 3-D – Three-dimensional (as in movies) is buffo box office this year, but 3-D is being used in new ways generally describing ‘robustness’ in products (such as toothpaste).
9. Shellacking – President Obama’s description of the ‘old-fashioned thumpin’ in George W. Bush’s words, that Democrats received in the 2010 US Mid-term elections.
10. Simplexity – The paradox of simplifying complex ideas in order to make them easier to understand, the process of which only adds to their complexity.
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