Word Of The Year

The results of the American Dialect Society's annual vote for Word of the Year - the one most representative of 1996 - are in. "Mom" beat out "alpha geek" by a hair.

That's not apple-pie mom, mind you, it's soccer mom, the woman whose vote all the politicians are scrambling for. An alpha geek is who you go to when your computer crashes, the one highest in the techie pecking order.

Members of the learned Dialect Society - Ph.D.s from all across the nation - also voted on the year's most "useful" word. The winner in a walk was again computer-related: "dot," as in easthamptonstar-dot-com.)

The word voted most likely to succeed, meaning stick around more than a year or two, was "drive-by," in the sense of a brief visit or hospital stay. Drive-by labor, drive-by viewing, drive-by laparoscopy. Speaking of staying power, it's illuminating to note that 1990's Word of the Year was "bushlips," meaning insincere political rhetoric.

Bushlips???

We bet though that you can guess what 1996's most controversial word was: "Ebonics." Some of the votes were close, but that one was unanimous.