WOTY 2006

After fierce competition in Albequerque, NM, the Word of the Year for 2006 has been chosen. The American Dialect Society has deemed truthiness the WOTY 2006. This one seemed to come out of nowhere. In the run-up to voting, the press was focusing on the more utilitarian podcasting and the flashier whale tail. But in the end, silliness won out.

Here's the full list of winners:

WOTY
truthiness: the quality of stating concepts or facts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true.

Most Useful
podcast: a digital feed containing audio or video files for downloading to a portable MP3 player. From the brand name MP3 player iPod + broadcast.

Most Creative
whale tail: the appearance of thong or g-string underwear above the waistband of pants, shorts, or a skirt. Also known as a longhorn.

Most Unnecessary
K Fed: Kevin Federline, Mr. Britney Spears.

Most Outrageous
crotchfruit: a child; children. Perhaps inspired by the expression the fruit of one’s loins, this term began among proponents of child-free public spaces, but has since spread to parents who use it jocularly.

Most Euphemistic
internal nutrition: force-feeding a prisoner against his or her will.

Best Tom-Cruise-Related Word: Cruiselex
jump the couch: to exhibit strange or frenetic behavior. Inspired by the couchbouncing antics of Tom Cruise on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show in May. It derives from an earlier term, jump the shark, meaning to (irretrievably) diminish in quality; to outlast public interest or popular support.

Most Likely to Succeed
sudoku: a number puzzle in which numbers 1 through 9 must be placed into a grid of cells so that each row or column contains only one of each. The current craze started in Japan, caught on in the U.K. in 2004, and then exploded in the U.S. in 2005.

Least Likely to Succeed
pope-squatting: registering a domain name that is the same of a new pope.
before the pope chooses his new name in order to profit from it.

And you can read the full list of runners up, etc. here. Note that not everyone is on board with the winner.