Chicago Tribune | `Podcast' is lexicon's Word of the Year
Chicago Tribune | `Podcast' is lexicon's Word of the Year: "`Podcast' is lexicon's Word of the Year
`Podcast' is lexicon's Word of the Year
By Nathan Bierma
Special to the Tribune
Published December 28, 2005
The editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary have validated the sudden spread of podcasting by naming "podcast" the Word of the Year for 2005.
"Podcast," defined as "a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player," will be added to the next edition of the New Oxford American Dictionary.
The word originated as a play on the word "broadcast" using the name of Apple's popular handheld digital music player, the iPod.
Apple's iPod made its debut in the fall of 2001, but podcasts didn't come of age until last year. As late as the fall of 2004, according to the Toronto Star, a Google Internet search for "podcast" returned zero results, and Google asked, "Did you mean: broadcast?"
One year later, Googling "podcast" turns up over 77 million results.
"Podcast was considered for inclusion last year, but we found that not enough people were using it, or were even familiar with the concept," said Erin McKean, the New Oxford American's Chicago-based editor-in-chief, in a statement. "This year it's a completely different story. The word has finally caught up with the rest of the iPod phenomenon."
Today, Apple's iTunes Music Store and Web sites such as Podcast.net and Podcastalley.com offer for download thousands of podcasts from sources ranging from National Public Radio to amateur talk-show hosts in their living rooms.
The "pod" in "iPod" suggests Apple's device is small and compact but chock full of good contents, like a pea pod. The word "pod" began as "cod" in Old English, meaning "the husk or outer covering of any fruit or seed." The "pod" spelling isn't recorded until 1688, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
(The "pod" that comes from the Greek word for "foot," as in "podiatrist" and "tripod," is unrelated.)
Trading a C for a P
Dictionaries list the origin of the word "pod" as obscure or unknown.
Etymologists say the letter "P" gradually replaced the word "C" in "cod," but they aren't sure why. Anatoly Liberman, author of "Word Origins and How We Know Them" (Oxford University Press, 312 pages, $25), says people may have favored the "P" in "pod" because it matched the sound of "pea," which is often paired with "pod." More subtly, Liberman says, "pod" might have emerged because it sounded similar to words such as "pad," "pudge," "pot" and "pudding." "Numerous English words referring to swollen objects, protrusion, and the like have the structure P + Vowel + Consonant," Liberman writes by e-mail. This sound structure, he says, may have "suggested fatness to the speakers of Germanic [languages]."
If Liberman is right, and "pod" did emerge in English because it sounded similar to words meaning "fat" or "full," then it would be ironic that Apple markets products in the iPod line that are distinctive for their thinness.
Not all word watchers agreed that "podcast" was the word of the year for 2005. The editors of Webster's New World College Dictionary named "infosnacking" as their word of the year, defining it as the practice of browsing the Web at work for scores, headlines and personal e-mail.
"It's a strange choice," wrote Michael Quinion in his World Wide Words newsletter (www.worldwidewords.org). "Few of us have come across it and it certainly hasn't gained the public visibility that makes it a defining word of 2005."
Other nominees
The American Dialect Society waits until the year is over to name its own word of the year. It will meet in Albuquerque on Jan. 6 to vote from a list of nominees such as "nuclear option" (referring to extreme tactics in the U.S. Senate); "refugee" (a controversial word for those displaced by Hurricane Katrina; "evacuee" became preferred); "spim" (spam sent by instant message); and "jump the couch" (to display frenzied, erratic behavior, as Tom Cruise did this year on "Oprah").
Merriam-Webster chooses its word of the year based on what people look up the most on its Web site (www.merriam-webster.com) -- not counting perennials such as "affect" and "effect." This year the most-searched-for word was "integrity," which Merriam-Webster defines as "firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values: incorruptibility." While every year brings its share of scandals, this year's intense political rhetoric and controversies may have given "integrity" a boost.
"We're not sure how to account for the increase in interest in this particular word, except that people do often look up the meanings of words that have special significance to current events and issues," said Merriam-Webster President John Morse in a statement.
posted by Tim Kretschmann @ 5:25 PM
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