Thursday, December 02, 2004

Eh-hum # 39

CONGRATS!

Got this article online. I think its something for the blog pioneers (in my case, for my sister and my friend Jac). Enjoy!

‘Blog’ lands as top new word for 2004
Updated 09:34pm (Mla time) Dec 01, 2004
By Erwin Lemuel Oliva INQ7.net


BLOG, a contraction of the term “web log,” is the latest geekspeak to enter Merriam-Webster’s Top-10 list of words for 2004. On its website, the US dictionary publisher said blog, defined as “a website that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks provided by the writer,” was the most searched word on the Internet this year.

Merriam-Webster compiles the list each year. This year, “blog” was the number one word in “online look-ups.” Blog or blogging is a recent phenomenon that has made website publishing easier. Popular blog hosting services, such as blogspot.com, have spawned millions of personal blogs that contains every imaginable subject matter. People create blogs to spread news and gossip, critique media and even share photos with friends. Media and corporations have used blogs to provide updated views on various issues affecting them. Recently, blogging has spawned so-called MP3blogs that feature free sample music in MP3 format, personal reviews, and links to online stores.

Blog will be a new entry in the 2005 version of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition. The complete list of words of the year is available at Merriam-Webster.com. So how does a word get into a Merriam-Webster dictionary? According to Merriam-Webster online, it has an army of editors tracking word usage. After scouring published material from the traditional to online publications, new words are marked and put into a computer system. This system is called a citation. Since the 1880s, Merriam-Webster has collected more than 15.7 million examples of words used in context.

In most cases, new words are added to the next edition of the dictionary if it has enough citations. However, in rare cases, a word jumps onto the scene and is both instantly prevalent and likely to last, as was the case in the 1980s with AIDS. John Barger coined the term “web log” in December 1997. In 1999, Peter Merholz coined the shorter version “blog.” Usage of the word spread during 1999 and the word was popularized by Pyra’s creation of their weblog service “Blogger.” As of March 2003, the Oxford English Dictionary has included the terms weblog, weblogging and weblogger.

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