Pluto was recently unceremoniously bumped from the planetary line up. After being snubbed by astronomers, the erstwhile ninth planet has found glory elsewhere – in the world of wordsmiths. The American Dialect Society has voted "Plutoed" the word of the year for 2006. The meaning of course is:
"to demote or devalue someone or something, as happened to the former planet Pluto when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto no longer met its definition of a planet."
The 117-year-old American Dialect Society comprises linguists, grammarians, historians and independent scholars, among others. Members conduct the vote for fun and not in an official capacity to induct words into the English language. According to Society member 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." [link]
The runner up for 2006 was "macaca / macaca moment," the meaning of which is: an American citizen treated as an alien.
Other words in the running for the honor:
- murse: a man’s purse
- climate canary: an organism or species whose poor health or declining numbers hint at a larger environmental catastrophe on the horizon
- flog: a fake blog created by a corporation to promote a product or a television show
Merriam-Webster Dictionary on the other hand, picked "truthiness" as its word of the year, 2006. That as we all learnt from Stephen Colbert means, "truth that comes from the gut, not books."
Interestingly enough, "truthiness" was the top word of 2005 picked by the American Dialect Society.
Accidental Blogger 
22 responses to ““Plutoed””
I wonder why the past participle rather than the infinitive took the award. The Chron story and the ADS press release both mention both forms, but the headlines go to “plutoed.” Perhaps it has something to do with the passive voice. The poor ex-planet was done in by a bunch of experts. By contrast, “Google” made it into OED as such.
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Google is something “you” do, whereas you get “plutoed” by someone else. Hence the passive voice.
BTW, I read somewhere not so recently that not all members of the GAIAU are at peace with Pluto’s plight as an “unplanet.” It appears that the decision may have been hasty and without the participation of all eligible voting members. So Pluto may get another vote and become “unplutoed.”
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One can get “Googled” as easily as “plutoed,” and experts can “pluto” as well as “Google,” no? But I think the negative tone of the passive voice does account for what was probably an automatic choice of form, even by the ADS. Your remarks about the GAIAU suggest that “pluto” (or “unpluto” or “depluto”) could very well come to refer to a procedural impropriety.
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See how we think according to our station in life! I am not famous enough to be “googled” or powerful enough to “pluto.” Hence the active voice in the former and the passive one for the latter :-) Although in my current status as person of leisure, no one can officially “pluto” me either.
I like your interpretation of the implied impropriety of “plutoing.” The ultimate “innocent victim!”
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Another recent usage, is the term ‘bangalored’ used in the passive sense only, as in ‘My job has been bangalored.’ I don’t think they use the term in the active sense. Strangely enough, the headline of an article recounting the moving of jobs out of Bangalore to cheaper centers was “Is Bangalore itself being bangalored?” In a way, it’s almost a pity that the Karnataka govt. has shown interest in switching from the name of Bangalore to the more authentic Kannadiga-loved version of Bengalooru.
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Where’s Andy Warhol when we need him? Nowadays, everybody gets to be famous. We’re all riding the long tail. We’re all somebody’s cult figure, insofar as somebody will for some odd reason—let’s withhold judgment as to just how odd it might be—Google us. Besides, I Google AB all the time! You have been Googled, Ruchira.
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I like using new words in sentences. Let’s give it a try. If a former UN secretary-general were to take up a martial art, yet shun compliments regarding his performance due to low-self esteem, you might say…
Boutros Boutros plutoed judo kudos.
Okay…maybe not.
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m,
Any luck with ‘farcical marmalade’ yet? How about “Boutros-Boutros plutoed farcical marmalade kudos at his breakfast table” ;)
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Boutros-Boutros plutoed kudos for judo …
Instead, he quietly played some Ludo.
Dean, you Google me? You mean you haven’t book-marked A.B.? I am aghast!
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“Any luck with ‘farcical marmalade’ yet?”
None until I read your rendering, Sujatha. Nicely done. I shall go with that one.
Ludo! That’s perfect! It ends up being difficult to find anything that rhymes with plutoed.
m(att)
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AB is bookmarked on my machine, but I often read it while I’m at others.
Let’s see. As long as we’re talking about marmalade, “food ode” rhymes suitably with “plutoed.” “Farcical marmalade” sounds Joycean to me. “Farce” means force-meat or stuffing. (The literary genre is a metaphorical use of this literal sense.) A “farcical marmalade,” then, might be a sweetened farce, a mockery not too mocking, or a slightly mocking bit of pleasant theatre.
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Dean…will you marry me? Of course, we’ll have to move to Canada and I’ll have to stop being heterosexual, but still. That’s beautiful.
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Dean,
You could have kayoed me with a feather, with your explanation of the links between farcical and marmalade (Paddington, Peru and Aunt Lucy, here I come!)
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Matt,
I’m honored that you’ve asked. (My wife proposed to me, too, at my behest, by the way.) I have a strong inclination to accept your offer–I love Canada, at least the French part, and one needn’t be hetero-, bi-, or homo- to be married, anyway. But I am already happily wed and the joyful father of a beautiful ten-month-old boy. Besides, this is all moving too quickly for me. We really ought to get to know each other better.
On the other hand, if you’re up for meeting up in Victoriaville (between Montreal and Quebec) for the week preceding our Memorial Day, that’d give me an excuse to attend the Festival International de Musique Actuelle, which I have sadly missed for the past several years. If you can tolerate five days of that music, you can tolerate me for a lifetime.
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Hmm… Dean and Matt!
That may be a farcical marmalade or marmaladed farce worth traveling to Canada for.
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Coule we have this farcical marmalade of a ceremony at Machu Picchu please? I offer to be a groom’s maid.
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“one needn’t be hetero-, bi-, or homo- to be married, anyway.”
Which is fortunate. The truth is that (in gardening parlance) I am herbaceous and prefer to pollinate in the spring. Sex ends up being irrelevant. I just need a windy day.
Ruchira: “Dean and Matt! That may be a farcical marmalade…worth traveling to Canada for.”
Seeing as how he’s married, we may have to switch the whole thing to Utah.
“We really ought to get to know each other better.”
Luckily I’m very, very simple. That won’t take long. I am bipedal. Herbaceous (as mentioned). Um…that about covers it. As a creature of habit, my biography is a tad plutoed.
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Ruchira, I hope you will archive this exchange in case Dean and Matt need an excuse to avoid any possible draft!
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I’m all for avoiding a draft. The question is whether we would be 4F’d because of asking/telling or mental incompetence.
Oh, and Matt: Utah’s fine by me, too. Salt Lake City has Sam Weller’s bookstore and, believe it or not, more than a few decent watering holes. The music’s good, too, and affordable. I’ll never forget a sublime free rehearsal and performance by the University of Utah student choir of Morton Lauridsen’s Les Chansons des Roses several years ago.
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“more than a few decent watering holes”
That’s about all I need to hear, although the music sounds wonderful too.
Sujatha: “Could we have this farcical marmalade of a ceremony at Machu Picchu please?”
Woo! Peru is nice. Who would Pluto Peru? M wouldn’t.
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One learns something new every day at Accidental Blogger. I’d never heard of FIMA before Dean mentioned it; having checked out their website, it encompasses, oddly enough, a big chunk of the music listened to in our house. Last year A and I attended the 50th birthday party of one of the 2006 featured musicians, Nels Cline, and his twin, Alex, which they celebrated with a show in LA at our favorite avant garde jazz venue/ Salvadorean pupuseria (since closed– not unpredictably, but sadly, nonetheless). Andrea Parkins we’ve seen a couple of times with Ellery Eskelin and others, back in our NY days, when we had more access and connection to such music, since A played saxophone in an experimental jazz funk band. Mark FIMA up as another reason to explore Canada, for which A and I share a basic, theoretical affection (grizzly bears, single payer health care system). Small world. Far be it from me to intrude on your special linguistic union with M, Dean (or vice versa), but if you feel like forming some sort of polygamous music collective in Utah, you’ve got two to count on, at least in solidarity.
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I’ll contact Anna directly off-line because I have much more to share about FIMAV, but it is rather amazing that I have enjoyed recordings and live shows by every one of the musicians she mentioned…and that this observation is made in the context of Ruchira’s musings about the vicissitudes of language and astronomy.
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