Word of the Year

The New Oxford American Dictionary's Word of the Year is (drum roll, please) "carbon neutral."

Being carbon neutral involves calculating your total climate-damaging carbon emissions, reducing them where possible, and then balancing your remaining emissions, often by purchasing a carbon offset: paying to plant new trees or investing in “green” technologies such as solar and wind power.

Comments from WorldViews:

I know I have never used the word "carbon neutral." And I cannot recall ever hearing an actual human being using it in conversation. It sounds like the editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary have been watching Al Gore movies and are trying to do their bit for global warming. Linguistics and dictionaries are supposed to be descriptive, scholars keep telling us, rather than prescriptive, but here we are again with lexicographers instructing us as to what is proper.

My favorite runners-up were dwarf planet and elbow bump.