According to the American Dialect Society annual vote 2012, “hashtag” was titled the Word of the Year. It was used almost everywhere in online conversations. Besides, it dictates social trends forming, popularizes viral posts that belong to all categories – beginning with the politics and ending with the culture. The hashtag is a word or phrase that serves as the determinant of message subject. The first character of every hashtag is #, which defines it as a hashtag.
The word-winner was chosen by the community members including philologists, linguists, etymologists, lexicographers, and other experts. According to the rules of voting, all possible expression words were determined as candidates. The American society is almost unthinkable without these words.
The following words were nominated for getting this award: YOLO (acronym, literally – “You Only Live Once”), “Gangnam style” (a popular Kоrean single from PSY), “fiscal cliff,” and several others.
This year the voting was held for the 23rd time in the history of the American Dialect Society. In 2011, the word “occupy” won, which denotes the protests. In 2010 this was “app”. In 2009 the word “tweet” took the prize.
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