CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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MERRIAM-WEBSTER NAMES ITS WORD OF THE YEAR 2008: "PHEW"

Friday, November 28, 2008

this entry brought to you by radiohead, "the bends"


SAN FRANCISCO - English-language dictionary Merriam-Webster announced today that an expression popular with Americans during the past year was voted its word of the year for 2008. The word "phew," often spelled with an exclamation point at the end, placed first in a Top Ten list voted by the organizers of Merriam-Webster. The word is described as an exclamation "expressing utter astonishment and relief at victory after long and oppressive anxiety concerning failure."

An example given by the dictionary is "Phew! We sure dodged a fucking bullet with that one."

Merriam-Webster chairman Rod Feibusch had this to say about the dictionary's word of the year: "Although the word 'Phew' has been around since the late 1600s, it exploded into the mainstream with historic frequency during this past year, when Barack Obama won the election for the President of the United States. But even before November this word was building up steam, being uttered in day-to-day conversations and in on-line forums in huge numbers when the US. government passed a bail-out plan to help the collapsed economy in mid September. Even during this Summer's Olympics, 'Phew' was heard in large numbers, when Michael Phelps, an American, won the most gold medals, giving the country a boost of pride that it hadn't seen in years. This spring we heard the word a lot being uttered after China shipped overwhelming numbers of deadly lead-based toys but there were no child casualties. Even prior to that the word was being used in large frequencies, when the calendar year turned to 2008, the last year of Bush being in office, and the planet had yet to erupt into a ball of flames. This isn't just a publicity stunt, as when we named 'w00t' our word of the year for 2007. This really was a historic year for the word 'Phew'."

Runners up to Word of the Year included "WTF", "information superhighway", "Batman", "ratbastardly", "abso-fucking-lutely", and "Barackomize".
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with love from CRS @ 3:59 AM 

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