KEY POINTS:
NEW YORK - Will "landslide" win by a landslide? Will "sectarian", "vendetta" or "decider" be named 2006's word of the year?
Merriam-Webster, publisher of a leading US dictionary, is asking visitors to its website to pick the "one single word that sums up 2006".
The voting began on November 20 and concluded on December 4, Arthur Bicknell, a spokesman for the Springfield, Massachusetts-based company, said.
"We've been getting literally thousands of submissions," he said.
The company, which is owned by Encyclopedia Britannica, had no idea what the leading words were but expected to announce the winner and the other top nine vote-getters around mid-December.
Merriam-Webster OnLine, which offers free definitions and synonyms through its web dictionary and thesaurus, began the word of the year competition in 2003, Bicknell said.
"We're trying something a little different this year" by seeking votes, the website says.
In past years, the top word was the one that got the most requests for a definition or synonym on the website.
Last year, the honour went to "integrity". "Blog" was the word of 2004 and in 2003 it was "democracy".
Clues to this year's winner could be found in the lists of popular look-ups throughout 2006: "filibuster, sectarian, vendetta and decider", Merriam-Webster's president and publisher, John Morse, said.
Morse said "google" made its Top 20 list after Merriam-Webster said it would add the use of "google" - the name of the popular web search engine - as a verb to the 11th edition of its Collegiate Dictionary.
- REUTERS
