Google named word of the decade

Popular search engine Google has been voted the 'word of the decade' by American speech scholars, who also named 'tweet' as 2009's top word.

The American Dialect Society (ADS) voted Google, the verb meaning 'to search the Internet', as the 'word of the decade' as it is used by almost everyone now-a-days.

The society also chose "tweet", sending a short message via Twitter, as the top word for 2009 at its 20th annual session held in Baltimore this month.

"Both words are, in the end, products of the information age, where every person has the ability to satisfy curiosity and to broadcast to a select following, both via the Internet," said Grant Barrett, chairman of the society's new words committee.

Other finalists for this year's Word of the Decade included "blog", "9/11", "Facebook", "text", "Wi-Fi" and "war on terror".

"I really thought 'blog' would take the honours in the word of the decade category, but more people Google than blog don't they? Plus, many people think 'blog' just sounds ugly," Barrett said in a statement.

Nominees for 'Word of the Year' were the suffix "-er", "fail", and "H1N1" (the virus that causes swine flu).

On the selection process, the 120-year-old society said, "The words or phrases do not have to be brand new, but they have to be newly prominent or notable in the past year."

ADS is a group of scholars who study the English language and other languages and dialects in the United States.