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Ten Web words that irk purists the most

A survey by British pollsters YouGov reveals the ten most irksome words spawned by the World Wide Web.

Languages are ever evolving and when it comes to that, English is the most dynamic of them all. As hundreds of foreign and newly coined words are added to the lexicon every year, older and rarely used words become redundant. Incidentally, there’s a proliferation of newer words ever since Internet usage became widespread. Die-hard purists may scorn at netizens’ temerity to play with words.

So, just to know which are the words raising the hackles of language purists, British pollsters YouGov conducted a poll for Web publisher Lulu.com, questioning a universe comprising 2,091 adults.

The most irksome word, many said, was 'Folksonomy', a Web classification system, followed by 'Blogosphere'. 'Blog’ itself comes at third position, followed by 'Netiquette' aka Web etiquette. 'Blook' or a book based on a Blog is the fifth most irksome word. 'Webinar', 'Vlog' or video Blog, and 'Social Networking' are at the sixth, seventh and eighth positions respectively. Qualifying as the ninth most irksome word is 'Cookie' and at tenth is 'Wiki', meaning a collaborative Web site edited by its readers.

Bob Young, Canadian founder of Lulu.com, observed that as the World Wide Web tirelessly churns out new words one can’t rule out the possibility of a new language Web-lish, which could well be the new English!

[ Via techtree ]