App was voted Word of the Year for 2010. (App being the abbreviated form of the noun application, software for a computer or phone operating system).

Each year, the American Dialect Society votes for the “vocabulary item” (it needn’t be a single word) that was  “…newly prominent or notable in the past year…” .  In 2009, it was Tweet. For 2010, it’s App.

Let’s take a look at some of the contenders:
Most Creative

spillion An immense number, calculated out of the gallons of oil spilled in the Gulf. Leading to spillionaire, someone made rich through the spill cleanup fund.

Most Euphemistic…

Call them memory crutches or call them mnemonic devices, they can help you remember to turn right at Maple Street, and which planet is closest to the Sun. Don’t we all need that?!

Most mnemonics are verbal—a word, phrase or rhyme—but they can be visual, auditory or kinesthetic: I still move my right hand if I want to double-check left from right.
Why do mnemonics work?
We could just learn the order of the planets:  Mercury Venus Terra Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto.  But it was easier for me to learn them by remembering: Mother Very Thoughtfully Made Jelly Sandwiches Under No Protest.

That …

Want to know what a blog really spends time talking about?  Wordle.net provides a fun, visually appealing, and easy to understand way to do just that.

Just type the URL for a blog into the appropriate field and Wordle will create a “Word Cloud” just for you.  Wordle looks through the most recent blog posts, and the more often a word is used, the larger it appears in the cloud.

Here’s what the recent Gold Mine posts look like: