The Macquarie Dictionary has announced its ‘word of the year' for 2007: ‘Pod-slurping.'  Pod-slurping, officially listed as a noun, is the downloading of large quantities of data to an MP3 player or memory stick from a computer. ‘The committee felt that the most important criterion for word of the year should be linguistic creativity and evocativeness, rather than simple worthiness or usefulness,' a Macquarie Dictionary statement said.

The Macquarie committee gave an honourable mention to the noun ‘infomania'--the tendency to give immediate attention to incoming messages such as email and text messages, resulting in constant distraction and a corresponding drop in the recipient's attention levels and work performance--and to ‘carbon footprint'. The People's Choice Award went to ‘password fatigue'.

These new words will join many others in the Macquarie Online Dictionary and in future print editions.

This article from Thorpe Bowker's Weekly Book Newsletter and Media Extra is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker