The Global Language Monitor (GLM) is an Austin, Texas-based company that documents, analyses and tracks trends in language usage worldwide, with a particular emphasis on English. It is known for its Top Words of the Year, political analysis, college and university rankings, High Tech buzzwords and media analytics.

On 9 November the GLM published the Top Words of 2011. The words come from the five continents, a confirmation of the ever expanding influence of the English language. They are culled from throughout the English-speaking world, which now numbers more than 1.58 billion speakers.

  1. Occupy – Occupy Movement, the occupation of Iraq, and the so-called ‘Occupied Territories’
  2. Deficit – the big problem with Western economies
  3. Fracking – Hydraulic fracturing, controversial method for extracting fossil fuels from otherwise unreachable deposits
  4. Drone – Remotely piloted aircraft
  5. Non-veg – A meal served with meat, originally from India
  6. Kummerspeck – A German word to indicate excess weight gained from emotional overeating (grief bacon)
  7. Haboob – An Arabic word to indicate massive sandstorms in the American Southwest
  8. 3Q – ‘Thank you,’ an example of the ever increasing mixing of numbers and letters to form words
  9. Trustafarians – Well-to-do youths (trust-funders) living a faux-Bohemian life style, now associated with the London Riots
  10. (The Other) 99 – Referring to the majority of those living in Western democracies who are left out of the dramatic rise in earnings associated with “the Top 1%.”