Hint
|
Answer
|
1999: The name of a "bug" that was primed to bring society to its knees. Then nothing happened.
|
Y2K
|
2000: It was "hanging" in Florida ballots, and left the presidential election hanging along with it.
|
Chad
|
2001: The date of the deadliest terrorist attack in human history.
|
9/11
|
2002: George Bush insisted that Saddam had them. Turns out he didn't. Or did he? No, wait. He didn't. (Four words).
|
Weapons of Mass Destruction
|
2003: The "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" team helped popularize this term for a fashionable but heterosexual male.
|
Metrosexual
|
2004: The two-word term for a state whose electoral votes were up for grabs in the U.S. presidential election.
|
Purple State
|
2005: Stephen Colbert's coinage for the perception that a proposition is true despite a lack of evidence or logic supporting the proposition.
|
Truthiness
|
2006: Past-tense participle describing something that has been demoted or devalued, named after an object that was itself "demoted" in this year.
|
Plutoed
|
2007: Adjective describing a risky mortgage that became a much-discussed element of the 2008 global financial crisis.
|
Subprime
|
2008: Term for the government's financial aid that rescued large companies, especially financial companies. Except Lehman Brothers.
|
Bailout
|
2009: A social media message of 140 characters or less.
|
Tweet
|
2010: A program specially-designed for use on a smartphone.
|
App
|
2011: A common verb, used in this specific sense to describe the act of taking over a location as an act of defiance, or to demand change in policy.
|
Occupy
|
2012: An internet neologism used to identify a particular topic, and help determine which topics were "trending."
|
Hashtag
|
2013: A common conjunction that internet mavens began using in a facetious and grammatically incorrect way, most commonly preceding the word "reasons." Must have been a slow news year.
|
Because
|
2014: Three-word rallying cry born of the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, among others, that became an influential social movement.
|
Black Lives Matter
|
2015: A pronoun that had previously been "plural-only" before gaining acceptance as a singular pronoun in recognition of queer and nonbinary people.
|
They
|
2016: Two-word term for a disastrous and embarrassing situation, often used to describe the United States during this year, especially in election season.
|
Dumpster Fire
|
2017: Two-word term describing disinformation spread across social media, or, when used by President Trump, describing any media coverage that did not portray him positively.
|
Fake News
|
2018: Three-word euphemism for detention camps on Texas's southern border where migrant children were held after being separated from their parents.
|
Tender Age Shelters
|
2019: Much-discussed grammatical parts of speech (see 2015 answer) by which someone identifies his or her preferred gender.
|
Pronouns
|
2020: The name of a bug that actually did bring society to its knees.
|
Covid
|
2021: Term for a violent uprising against a government, which over 2,000 people attempted by storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
|
Insurrection
|
Great quiz!
No fault to the quiz maker of course! I just wanted to feature this quiz and was very disappointed by the list chosen by the American Dialect Society. I'd write them a letter if I thought it would make any difference.