Tegic Reveals the Year's Most Buzzworthy Additions to T9 Dictionary

Did you know that a Puggle is a new breed of dog crossed between a Pug and a Beagle? Or that Vlogs (video blogs) are the latest rage? Language is constantly evolving, with new words becoming part of our culture every day. These and other words have been added to a special T9 predictive text input dictionary for users to tap into when texting on their mobile phones.

T9 Buzzword: Puggle

In collaboration with Paul McFedries, author of Word Spy: The Word Lover's Guide to Modern Culture, Tegic has identified the most buzzworthy new words of the year for T9 predictive text software.

"As a society, we're compelled to create new words to name and describe our new inventions and ideas and institutions," said McFedries. "We use these words in everyday conversation, whether spoken or written, so it only makes sense to make it easier for avid texters to send a quick SMS on the puggle they just saw or the vlog entry they posted this morning."

The top ten "buzz words" to be added to the T9(R) dictionary for 2005 include:

• Lifehack - a tool or technique that makes some aspect of one's life easier or more efficient
• Mashup - new information created by combining data from two different sources
• Placeshift - to redirect a TV signal so the viewer can watch a show on a device other than his or her television
• Playlistism - judging a person based on what songs are on the playlist of his or her digital music player
• Podjack - to plug the cord of one's digital music player into the jack of another person's player to hear what the person is listening to
• Puggle - a dog bred from a pug and a beagle
• Sideload - to transfer music or other content to a cell phone using the cell phone provider's network
• Vlog - a blog that contains mostly video content
• Vodcast - a video podcast
• Ubersexual - a heterosexual man who is masculine, confident, compassionate and stylish

"Over the last couple of years, we've really seen text messaging take off here in the U.S.," said Eric Collins, vice president, Tegic Communications, the company behind T9 predictive text input software. "As more of our daily conversations take place via text, we will continue to track evolving language trends to help T9 users to text with ease, adding more words as they enter the vernacular.""

Posted to the site on 23rd December 2005