2002年流行英语词汇Top Ten Word Lists of 2002

美国网络词典门户网站发布了2002年流行英语词汇Top 10排行榜，包括：Top Ten Words, September 11, People's Names, California YouthSpeak, Top Phrases, Corporate¹ Buzzwords, Sports, Best & Worse Corporate Name Changes, Internet-related, and more.
Top Ten Words of 2002

1. Misunderestimate What President Bush’s opponents have learned not to do, in his own word.

2. Survivor² This time an uplifting story about Pennsylvania coal miners and not a ‘reality TV’ series. .

3. Listeria A new danger found lurking³ in our food, named for the same man (Joseph Lister) who invented the surgical⁴ antiseptic now used as a mouthwash, Listerine.

4. Perp-walk The parading of criminals in handcuffs before the cameras. It made the news only as some of the nation's most distinguished⁵ faces began appearing there.

5. Bandwidth What people are increasingly out of, a computer term now applied⁶ to modern life.

6. Sniper As around the Beltway. The US discovered that terrorists do not have a monopoly on terror.

7. To nasdaq As in, "His fortune was nasdaqued." The bubble of the mid-to-late ‘90s returns to reality and adds a worthy⁷ item to our vocabulary.

8. Warlords The freedom fighters of an earlier era today are now a threat to delicate Afghani democracy.

9. Issue A great new euphemism⁸ for problem, fault or any other type of misstep; we no longer repair the fault, we simply ‘resolve’ the issue.

10. Pedophilia Not the love of feet, though it has rocked the Catholic Church to its foundations.

Top Ten Personal Names of 2002

1. W (Dubya) George W. Bush remains⁹ at the center of the whirlwind.

2. Trent Lott The Republican’s November surprise thrust him back into the spotlight¹⁰ and he made the most of it at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party.

3. Cardinal¹¹ Law More properly, Bernard Cardinal Law, who was ousted¹² from the Boston Archdiocese for his mishandling of the sexual abuse scandal.

4. Elizabeth Dole¹³ After her husband's defeat in his bid for the presidency¹⁴, Ms. Dole returns to Washington as the Republican Senator from North Carolina.

5. Rudolph Giuliani Last year’s consensus¹⁵ Man of the Year now reaping millions as a consultant¹⁶, speaker and author.

6. The Osbournes MTV’s dysfunctional family hit has unleashed¹⁷ Ozzie’s clan¹⁸ to the world-at-large.

7. Saddam Hussein The nemesis¹⁹ of former president Bush who won the presidential ‘election’ in Iraq with 100% of the vote and now faces Mr. Bush's son in a showdown.

8. Osama bin²⁰ Laden²¹ Dead or alive, still making news.

9. Martha Stewart This year has definitely not been ‘a good thing’.

10. Al Gore²² Cleared the way for President Bush to win his next election for President by gracefully²³ bowing out of contention²⁵.

Top Ten California Youthspeak

1. Hottie Object of affection, either personally or in the cultural milieu²⁶.

2. For shizzle Variation of ‘for sure’, popularized by rapper Snoop Dogg.

3. Tight Replacing 'cool'.

4. Phat Way cool, as in ‘rolling phat’.

5. Hella An intensive: hella tight or hella phat.

6. Wassup This greeting refuses to die, entering mainstream²⁷ circles.

7. Flow Dinero, money. Originally from ‘cash flow’. Also, ‘bank’ for lots of flow.

8. Poppins Perfect. In the California version of Cockney rhyming slang ‘toppins’ rhymes with Poppins, which connotes Mary Poppins who was ‘perfect in every way’.

9. Bling bling The sounds of diamond and gold jewelry²⁸ clinking together.

10. Stog Cigarette, short for ‘stogy’.

Bonus California Youthspeak Phenomenon of Note

1. Up Talking Ending all sentences with a rising or upward inflection, as if asking a question.

Top Phrases of 2002

1. Threat Fatigue²⁹ The dulling of the senses to imminent³⁰ terrorist threats.

2. Weapons of Mass Destruction The key to whether the US will stage an aggressive attack on Iraq.

3. Suicide Bomber³¹ 2002 was a sad year as record numbers of Palestinian youth decided³² to trade their lives for Israeli lives.

4. Shoe Bomb An idea that might have outperformed Air Jordans landed Richard Reid in jail and initiated³³ the shoe search at US airports

5. Infectious enronitis A disease of accounting³⁴ practices that spread widely throughout US businesses.

6. Homeland Security A new phrase of mysterious origins naming the national response to 9/11.

7. Dot communism The conviction that everything on the Web should be free-or, at least, paid for by someone else.

Top 5 Words Coined by President Bush (Bushisms)

1. Misunderestimate To seriously underestimate.

2. Embetter To make emotionally better (antonym to embitter).

3. Resignate To resonate as in, "They said this issue wouldn't resignate with the People.”

4. Foreign-handed To understand the complexity³⁵ of geopolitical realities from the various global perspectives, as in "I have a foreign-handed foreign policy”.

5. Analyzation To fully²⁴ study a subject, as in "This case has had full analyzation and has been looked at a lot”.

Best New Product Names

1. Trikke Scooter Great name for an unconventional three-wheeled scooter

2. Nano Tex High tech fabric³⁶ that utilizes³⁷ nanotechnology to create a super-smooth, stain-resistant fabric.

3. Twist and Pour Paints The paint container that’s designed to let the user ‘twist-and-pour’ the paint. The name says it all.

 

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