New Words of 1990

President George H.W. Bush: “Read my lips: no new taxes” led to “bushlips.”

No, the headline isn’t an inadvertent anachronism. The year is now really 2018, and the American Dialect Society, together with friends in the Linguistic Society of America, last week concluded a yearlong campaign by choosing “fake news” as Word of the Year for 2017. The vote took place with an audience of several hundred at the annual meetings of those groups.

It was a long way from the very first such vote, conducted before an audience of only a few dozen at the dialect society’s meeting in December 1990. Fortunately, the society’s newsletter of January 1991 preserves a fresh account of how it went. Here’s that 1991 report [slightly annotated]:

New Words of 1990

David Barnhart, editor of the Barnhart Dictionary Companion, and John Algeo, co-conductor of “Among the New Words” in [the journal] American Speech, made ADS history at the 1990 annual meeting with the first-ever year-end review of new words, culminating in a vote on the new words of the year.

And the winners were —

— But first the audience had to be properly informed. Each of the panelists handed out long lists of candidates for the outstanding words of 1990. Barnhart had 119 words culled from recent numbers of BDC and “ANW,” while Algeo offered 132 possible items for future issues of the Algeo & Algeo [John and Adele] column.

And the nominations?

Algeo’s candidates for most original word of 1990 were “bushlips” (insincere political rhetoric) and “voice merging (the oral tradition of black preachers using another’s words); for most amazing word, “bungee jumping” (jumping with elastic cables on the feet); for most useful, “potty parity” (equalization of toilet facilities for the sexes) and “technostupidity” (loss of ability through dependence on machines); for most unnecessary, “peace dividend” (anticipated savings in military spending due to improved relations with the U.S.S.R.); for most outrageous, “PC” or “politically correct” (adhering to principles of left-wing political concern); and for most likely to succeed, “rightsizing” (to adjust the size of a staff by laying off employees) and “notebook PC” (a portable personal computer weighing 4-8 pounds).

Barnhart noted that “peace dividend” goes back to 1975 and the end of another war.

And the vote? For new word of the year 1990, “bushlips” 12, “crack baby” (one born addicted to crack) 5, “PC” 5, “potty parity” 4, “envelope, push the edge of” (to be near violating acceptable behavior) 2, “bright collar” (member of a managerial, professional, or entrepreneurial class) 2, “boondocks,” “boondock” (a fast-growing community in the country) 1.

[Hmm. is New Words of the Year same as plain Words of the Year? To be continued.]