‘YOGA’ AMONG MOST POPULAR WORDS USED IN BRITISH SOCIETY

LONDON:“YOGA” along with words like “Facebook” and “Twitter” are among the top fifteen most popular words in British society, say scientists who found that the internet age has had a massive influence on the English language.

The need to communicate with a wider world coupled with a move away from the cosy, closeknit communities of the 90s has dramatically changed the way British people speak over the last two decades, researchers said.

The study, by Lancaster University and Cambridge University Press in the UK, looked at the most characteristic words of informal chit-chat in today’s Britain.

The internet age has had a massive influence on the words we use, the researchers said.

While in the 1990s we were captivated by “cassettes”, today “email”, “Internet”, “Facebook”, “Google”, “Youtube”, “website”, “Twitter”, “texted”, “iphone” and “ipad” all top the bill.

“Twenty-four” reflects the open-all-hours community in which we now live – far away from a world where the “cobbler” and “playschool” were high in our vocabulary.

Words like “permed”, “comb” and “tar rah” have fallen out of popularity, according to the study.

“Awesome”, which replaced “marvellous” in an earlier study, is still popular and now joins “massively” in the top 15.

The word “croquet” has taken a hit along with expressions such as “mucking”, “whatsername”, “golly” and “matey”. “Boxer”, “crossword” and “draught” were all in the 1990s’ top 15.

An earlier study by the team compared existing data from the 1990s to two million words of then newly collected data from the year 2012.