Bonus California Youthspeak Phenomenon of Note

1. Up Talking Ending all sentences with a rising or upward inflection, as if asking a question.

Top Phrases of 2002

1. Threat Fatigue¹ The dulling of the senses to imminent² terrorist threats.

2. Weapons of Mass Destruction The key to whether the US will stage an aggressive attack on Iraq.

3. Suicide Bomber³ 2002 was a sad year as record numbers of Palestinian youth decided⁴ to trade their lives for Israeli lives.

4. Shoe Bomb An idea that might have outperformed Air Jordans landed Richard Reid in jail and initiated⁵ the shoe search at US airports

5. Infectious enronitis A disease of accounting⁶ practices that spread widely throughout US businesses.

6. Homeland Security A new phrase of mysterious origins naming the national response to 9/11.

7. Dot communism The conviction that everything on the Web should be free-or, at least, paid for by someone else.

Top 5 Words Coined by President Bush (Bushisms)

1. Misunderestimate To seriously underestimate.

2. Embetter To make emotionally better (antonym to embitter).

3. Resignate To resonate as in, "They said this issue wouldn't resignate with the People.”

4. Foreign-handed To understand the complexity⁷ of geopolitical realities from the various global perspectives, as in "I have a foreign-handed foreign policy”.

5. Analyzation To fully⁸ study a subject, as in "This case has had full analyzation and has been looked at a lot”.