#Happy New Year to all you beautiful people. There were some really good moments and some okay moments during the past year but the word Hashtag enjoyed increasing popularity through the whole of 2012. No surprises then that the word has been named the top word of 2012, by the American Dialect Society.
The Internet phenomenon edged out out words like 'Gangnam Style', 'YOLO' (You Only Live Once) and 'fiscal cliff.'
While the word has been around for decades- the linguistic traditionalists decided that it outperformed its influence this year.
'This was the year when the hashtag became a ubiquitous phenomenon in online talk,' chair of the New Words Committee Ben Zimmer in the statement.
Hashtag, which means to apply the symbol # before a keyword in order to start or add to a topic on Twitter, became a household term along with the continued growth of the social network.
From there, it spread onto Facebook and everyday speech.
'In the Twittersphere and elsewhere, hashtags have created instant social trends, spreading bite-sized viral messages on topics ranging from politics to pop culture,' Zimmer said.
He said: "Hashtag could sometimes be heard in oral use introducing a snappy mata-commentary on what had just been said."
That is true and not necessarily something to be applauded. Spouting something like "Hashtag Awkwaaaaaard!" does sound rude.
The word also gained a little bad reputation when some presumably Twitter-obsessed parents named their baby 'Hashtag' last year.
Also, Newsweek presented its final edition of print with the hashtag #LastPrintIssue, before the iconic periodical went all digital.
But this isn't the first time an Internet term has received the acknowledgement: "Tweet" was declared word of the year by the Language group in 2010, while "Google" was then-named the word of the decade. In response to the worldwide Occupy movements, "Occupy" was announced last year's word of the year.