Survey: Sexting tops poll of geek speak groans

‘Sexting’ has been voted the most annoying new technology word added to dictionaries over the last year, winning a new award for the year’s most unspeakable example of tech talk or geek-speak.

Sexting – which means “the sending of sexually explicit photographs or messages by mobile phone” – wins the first annual Unspeakable Award, given by Computeractive magazine to the “new, technology-related word most likely to make you wince, grimace or want to bang your head on the keyboard”.

It does so after topping an online poll of 2,054 people conducted by YouGov for Computeractive to find the single “most annoying or horrible” new technology-related word added to dictionaries over the last year or so.

Every year the world of technology yields a fresh crop of hideous and often baffling new words, says Computeractive editor Paul Allen, and they spread like wildfire over the internet.

He said: “The result is that Techlish (alias tech-speak or geek-speak) is starting to swamp English. It’s time that someone took a stand. That’s why we’re launching our award.”

Respondents to the YouGov online poll selected from a short-list drawn up by Computeractive of 10 new, technology-related words.

“Sexting” polled 24 per cent of the votes – almost twice as many as the 13 per cent that earned “intexticated” second place and three times the eight per cent that bagged “defriend” third place.

Intexticated means unable to concentrate while driving because of being distracted by texting, and defriend is to remove someone from one’s list of friends on a social networking site.