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By: Ben Zimmer,
on 9/6/2007
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OUPblog
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What’s your favorite word? On Wordie.org, a website launched last year by John McGrath, you can post lists of “words you love, words you hate, whatever.” So far, about 4,800 users (”Wordies”) have posted a total of 264,000 words, 90,000 of which are unique. In this efflorescence of logophilia, what word strikes the fancy of the most Wordies? Topping the list of the “most wordied” words is schadenfreude, submitted by 250 users. This German loanword, defined by the New Oxford American Dictionary as “pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune,” easily outpaces runners-up like quixotic, serendipity, loquacious, and plethora. (If defenestrate and defenestration joined forces, that handy term for throwing someone out a window would come in a close second.) What does it say about Web-savvy language lovers that the word they find most notable describes malicious mirth in the misery of others? Are we all just a bunch of sadists?
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