Merriam-Webster Word-of-the-Year Announced: Is it a Word?

Hello and welcome to the J.Q. Rose blog! I'm J.Q. Rose. J is for Janet, Q is a nod to my maiden name, and Rose because I love roses. I also love words. So I combined all this into making my author pen name, J.Q. Rose, for writing.

I, a wordsmith woman, could not believe the Word-of-the-Year chosen by Merriam-Webster.  They recently announced the most popular word of the year was, are you ready for this, "-ism." Say what? I looked down my nose at the choice of a suffix as a word. sniff sniff, In my mind, I reprimanded the person who wrote the article, Lori Borgman in The Tampa Tribune, for such heresy. Then I reminded myself, Ms. Borgman was reporting the news and that word was news to me!

Dictionary
Courtesy of freedigitalphotos.com Photo by Stuart Miles

I immediately went to dictionary.com to get some fodder to reply to such nonsense. -ism is not a word. Can't you picture a young sixth-grader vying for the win in his regional spelling bee? When the judge tells him the word to spell is "ism" could he ask the judge to use it in a sentence? How would you use it in a sentence? All I can think of is "Ism is not a word." 

If the contestant asked for a definition, here's how ism is defined in dictionary.com--
"noun
1.a distinctive doctrine, theory, system, or practice:
This is the age of isms."

Noun? You can imagine my astonishment when I saw it was defined as a legitimate noun. 

Ms Borgman goes on to explain Merriam-Webster chooses the word of the year by keeping charts noting the highs and lows of a word's popularity at their website, m-w.com. The most frequently checked words for definitions were socialism, fascism, racism, feminism, communism, capitalism and terrorism. 

I still disagree with the choice since, yes, there are a lot of isms in the words that are looked up, but ism is a part of a word, people. 

How do you feel about the choice of ism as the word of the year?  Do you agree? Can you use ism in a sentence???

This Week:

Tuesday, January 19--Delighted to host author Anna Simpson on her book blog tour for her latest release, White Light. 

New Release: Anna Simpson's White Light

       

The excitement is building toward the release date of my author friend's new cozy mystery. Find out all about Anna Simpson's White Light! 

Congratulations, Anna!!

White Light by Anna Simpson

Publisher: Three Worlds Press

Genre: Cozy

Release Date: December 22/2015

     

About The Book:

Emma never dreamed of being a super-sleuth. In her mind, she’s more Scooby Doo than Nancy Drew and when her nosy neighbor, Mrs. Perkins, drags her to an anniversary party to solve a mystery, she rolls her eyes, buys a box of chocolates and hops in the car.

What’s a party without an attack on its host—or more accurately on the host’s grandson, sparking an allergic reaction and moving the party to the hospital waiting room. Suddenly, everyone is a suspect. Emma and Mrs. Perkins, along with Great Aunt Alice (a spirit with boundary issues who keeps stepping into Emma’s body like a new dress and playing matchmaker), dive into an investigation that almost gets Emma killed along with the man they are trying to protect. With so many reasons to kill him and so much to be gained if he died, Emma and Mrs. Perkins must unravel the tenuous ties that point to every member of his family as potential killers.

Even if it means going back to the psych ward, Emma will protect her friend and this innocent man. What good is freedom if it's haunted with guilt?

Author Links:Facebook | Twitter | Blog

About the Author:

Anna Simpson lives near the Canadian-US border with her family. Even though she's lived in several places in British Columbia, her free spirit wasn't able to settle down until she moved back to her hometown.

She is easy to find though, if you know the magic word -- emaginette. Do an internet search using it and you'll see what I mean. :-)