http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/lifestyle_us_wordsNEW YORK, (AFP) - "Metrosexual," denoting a fashion conscious heterosexual male, hs been voted Word of the Year 2003 by the American Dialect Society, beating out some macho Iraq (news - web sites)-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 (news - web sites)," and a trio of terms used to describe the current Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger (news - web sites) -- "governator," "gropenator" and "gropenfuhrer."
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."
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