Squeezed middle is the word of 2011

Squeezed middle is Oxford Dictionaries’ ‘word’ of 2011. Only just, though – it won by a whisker, according to Oxford Dictionaries’ own website.

The year’s winning word (or, more accurately, lexical item – ‘word’ is a very wishy-washy word - as I once explained in this post) does not have to have been coined this year, just used a lot and representative of the mood or Zeitgeist. Most of the contenders for the ‘prize’ were sombre (despite bunga bunga and other 2011 coinings!), reflecting the general mood – Arab spring, phone hacking, occupy.

A quick straw poll of the people around me at the moment reveals that some of us – me included – had never heard squeezed middle before. Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour Party, is fond of the expression, apparently; he uses it to refer to the groups in society who are bearing the brunt of government tax burdens.

Squeezed middle is more than just the UK word of the year – it is the global word of the year, agreed upon by US and UK Oxford Dictionary teams.

Read Susie Dent’s article on choosing the word of the year here, and for an in-depth look at the squeezed middle see this Daily Telegraph article.

Comments

[Marc Leavitt]

Susan:
"Squeezed middle" has created quite a kerfuffle(see articles in today's Language Log). I have to agree with Geoff Pullum; it's a compositional phrase, not a word. If the word mavens at Oxford want to change the parameters of the contest, so be it, but to my mind, a word is a word is a word. In the end, it's all a tempest in a pot of tea.

[Virtual Linguist]

Thanks, Marc. Yes, deciding what exactly a word is does cause a lot of arguments!