Last month the American Dialect Society announced the “Words of the Year” for 2002. Although the winning word/phrase was “weapons of mass destruction”, computing once again provided many of the main contenders including: Google (verb): to search the Web using the search engine Google for information on a person or thing - which was deemed most useful; and Blog: from weblog, a website of personal events, comments, and links - which was considered “most likely to succeed”.

Among my favourites were:

• Neuticles - fake testicles for neutered pets.
• Enronomics - fraudulent business and accounting practices.
• Embetterment - as in President Bush’s “the embetterment of mankind”.