'Pod slurping' is Macquarie Dictionary's word of the year for 2007!

Melbourne, Feb 4 : Pod slurping - described as the downloading of large quantities of data to an MP3 player or memory stick from a computer - has been announced as Macquarie Dictionary's word of the year for 2007.

Australian dictionary's three-member selection committee, which comprised of vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney, Professor Gavin Brown, Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Sydney, Professor Stephen Garton, and publisher of the Macquarie Dictionary, Susan Butler, picked up the word.

During the announcement, the Macquarie Dictionary Word of the Year committee said that the expression's inventive and sensuous appeal had seduced them. "The committee felt that the most important criterion for word of the year should be linguistic creativity and evocativeness, rather than simple worthiness or usefulness,'' News.com.au quoted the judges, as saying.

"Pod slurping also dips its lid to pod, a potent little word of our times,'' they added.

Pod slurping, officially listed as a noun, will join the list of other new words in the annual update of the Macquarie Dictionary Online.

ANI