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Monday, Dec 13, 2004

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National

Blogs its way to the dictionary

The editors of the Merriam-Webster group of dictionaries have discovered that the word for which the maximum number of requests were received for a definition, on their website was `blog.' The word heads the list of `Top Ten' words looked up by users during 2004, and will find a place in the 2005 edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. The entry will run:

"Blog: noun [short for Weblog] (1999): a website that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer."

It generally takes about two decades of usage for a word to get into the dictionary. But in the Internet Age, lexicographers have to react very fast to new patterns of a developing lingo. The blog is less than five years old.

The other words shortlisted were: incumbent, electoral, insurgent, hurricane, cicada, peloton (the main body of riders in a bicycle race), partisan, sovereignty, defenestration (throwing of a person or thing out of a window).

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