'Metrosexual' comes out tops

2004-01-10 10:14

New York - "Metrosexual," denoting a fashion conscious heterosexual male, was voted Word of the Year 2003 by the American Dialect Society Friday, beating out some macho Iraq-war linked neologisms in a heated debate.

The winning noun, chosen as the word that most coloured the nation's discourse last year, defeated "pre-emptive self-defence," or an attack before a possible attack, and the verb "embed" - to place a journalist with troops.

Among the other nominated words and phrases that failed to make the cut were "weapons of mass deception," "Sars," and a trio of terms used to describe the current Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger - "governator," "gropenator" and "gropenfuhrer."

Voting was held at the society's annual conference in Boston, with 70 participants casting their ballots.

Tough choice

The president of the society's new word committee, Wayne Glowka, admitted that "metrosexual" had been a contentious choice, with some members "grumbling" that it was somewhat derogatory and trivial.

"The word of the year is supposed, in some way, to define who or what we are, so it was quite a strange in that sense," Glowka said.

"On the one hand you had words associated with people toughing it out in the deserts of Iraq, and then the winner was guys who hang around the cosmetics counter," he added.

In fact "metrosexual" has been around for a number of years, but rose to prominence in 2003, partly due to the hit television show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," in which five gay men give a weekly makeover to a grungy-looking heterosexual.

"There was a feeling that Iraq-linked words were in danger of dominating everything and, while the war was obviously important, some voters felt it was necessary to acknowledge there were other things going on," Glowka explained.

The American obsession with diet was loosely reflected in two other categories, with "flexitarian" (a vegetarian who occasionally eats meat) winning the Most Useful Word title, while "freegan" (a person who eats only what they can get for free) was voted Most Creative Word.

In the Most Unnecessary Word category - denoting a term for which an already perfectly good word exists - the surprise winner was "freedom" in the sense of replacing "French" in phrases or compound nouns such as "French fries."

The term gained currency in the United States as a form of protest against France's opposition to the war in Iraq.

- AFP