Striving to be somewhat of a locavore, I am often surfing away on the subject. Recently I stumbled across something that announced the New Oxford American Dictionary’s Word of the Year for 2007 is “locavore”.

Who knew that they make up a word every year! Or rather they award the status of being a “word” to a word that has culturally become a word on its own. Well at least now we have the dictionary’s permission to use it. Not to mention the benefit to Scrabble players!

Going off on the “Word of the Year” tangent, I perused a bit to see what recent words won the right to be called a “word”.

This is just a sampling…

In 2004, Merriam-Webster decided “blog” was worthy of being a word.

Then in 2005 the New Oxford American Dictionary picked “podcast”.
In case you were wondering what was the competition to “podcast”, they included: bird flu, lifehack, sudoku and trans fat.

In 2006 Merriam-Webster’s word of the year was “truthiness”. This somehow came in first place over the second word of the year “google”. Considering that “google” is commonly used as both a verb and noun, I personally feel it got ripped-off in getting second place.

The New Oxford American Dictionary picked “carbon neutral” as their Word of the Year for 2006.

Then in 2007, “locavore” made it! I hadn’t really given any thought to its word status previously, but it is pretty cool that it got some media attention. I also learned that the word was coined right here in the Bay Area a couple years ago by the women that started a local 100 mile diet group, in which the goal is to try to eat only food grown or produced within a 100-mile radius.

I’m glad that “locavore” beat out its competition of “cougar” (as in older women into younger guys – not the cat)!

As defined in Wikipedia:
“Local food (also regional food or food patriotism) or the local food movement is a “collaborative effort to build more locally based, self-reliant food economies – one in which sustainable food production, processing, distribution and consumption is integrated to enhance the economic, environmental and social health of a particular place” [1] and is considered to be a part of the broader sustainability movement. It is part of the concept of local purchasing and local economies, a preference to buy locally produced goods and services. Those who prefer to eat locally grown/produced food sometimes call themselves “localvores” or locavores. [2]“

Tags: Life

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