The Wall Street Journal reported an analysis of the news it published in 2010 reveals an array of words and terms that starred in this year’s coverage – many of which rarely appeared in 2009, if at all.
Covering topics ranging from volcanoes and other disasters to sports and financial events, fashion trends and automobile recalls, the “Words of the Year” interactive feature includes photos and coverage, maps, info-graphics, timelines and more to help showcase the words that told the stories of 2010.
The Journal “Words of the Year” highlights include:
- “Greece” appeared 1,406 times in 2010 – compared to 213 in 2009;
- “Tea Party” appeared 549 times this year, up from 46 last year;
- Also spiking in appearances over 2009 include “Wikileaks,” rising from just one appearance last year to 167 this year; “sudden acceleration” from Toyotas resulting in a jump of eight to 127 appearances; and new airport security measures helping “pat down” grow from two to 19 appearances;
- The World Cup in South Africa brought “vuvuzela” up to 18 appearances from two last year, while President Obama’s post-midterm election reference to “shellacking” resulted in that word’s appearance 19 times versus four in 2009;
- Words that appeared this year after a hiatus in 2009 include the “flash crash,” a volcano named “Eyjafjallajokull,” “check in” from Foursquare, and Deepwater Horizon’s “blowout preventer;”
- The April debut of the iPad resulted in its appearance more than 550 times.
Editors scoured a list of every word that appeared in The Journal since Jan. 1, 2010, using technology from Factiva, a research product owned by Dow Jones & Co. The list was stripped of common terms such as “the” and ordered by frequency, noting how many times each word appeared in the newspaper.
Editors then narrowed the list to 30, favoring words that symbolized news or cultural developments of note in 2010. Factiva then calculated article counts for 2010 and 2009. The winning words were identified when the calculations revealed a leap in usage from year to year.
