Pluto's Demotion Tapped as 2006 Word of the Year

Hubble images revealing Pluto, its large moon Charon, and the planet's two new satellites. The candidate moons aren't visible in the short-exposure image [left], but can be seen in the middle and right-hand images. CREDIT: NASA/ESA/JHU/APL/SwRI

Pluto is finally getting some respect - from wordsmiths.

"Plutoed'' was chosen 2006 Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society at its annual meeting on Friday.

To "pluto'' is "to demote or devalue someone or something'' much like what happened to the former planet last year when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto did not meet its definition of a planet.

"Our members believe the great emotional reaction of the public to the demotion of Pluto shows the importance of Pluto as a name,'' said society president Cleveland Evans. "We may no longer believe in the Roman god Pluto, but we still have a sense of personal connection with the former planet.''

"Plutoed'' won in a runoff against "climate canary,'' defined as "an organism or species whose poor health or declining numbers hint at a larger environmental catastrophe on the horizon.''

Other words in the running: murse (man's purse), flog (a fake blog that promotes products) and macaca (an American citizen treated as an alien).

Former Senator George Allen, a Republican who sought reelection last year, was comfortably ahead in polls until August, when he referred to the son of Indian immigrants as macaca, regarded by some as a racial slur. Allen lost to Democrat Jim Webb.

The 117-year-old organization includes linguists, grammarians, historians and independent scholars. In conducting the vote, members do so for fun and not in any official capacity of inducting words into the English language.

Last month, an online survey by dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster declared "truthiness'' the word of the year for 2006. "Truthiness'' was credited to television satirist Stephen Colbert, who defined it as "truth that comes from the gut, not books.''

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