Website names top words of 2003

The word “blog” has been picked as one of the top words of 2003 by a US website specialising in language. Website yourDictionary.com, which offers more than 2,500 dictionaries for more than 300 languages, has compiled a list of what it claims is the top word, phrase and name of the year. According to the site, weblogs have come of age in 2003 and “regrettably, this lexical mutation [blog] with them”. The word "blog" was ranked as the second top word of the year. The top word of the year was "embedded” – the word used to describe news correspondents embedded in military units in Iraq. The word "SARS" ranked third. The top phrase of 2003 was “shock-and-awe” – the US strategy in US - and the top personal name of 2003 went to Saddam Hussein. “This year the Iraqi War has dominated the English language as it has dominated the news," said Robert Beard, chief executive at yourDictionary. However, Paris Hilton, the hotel-chain heiress, also featured in the list of top personal names following the “internet distribution of her extracurricular activities”. yourDictionary.com has also published a list of president George W Bush’s top-five mispronunciations, including "new-cue-ler" (for nuclear) and “a-merr-ca” (for America), and top product names, which includes Apple's download service "iTunes".