Words of the Year selected for 2003 Chosen at the annual American Dialect Society conference held in Boston, the 2003 Words (or Phrases) of the Year were announced on January 9, 2004. The conference attendees voted in several categories for the most representative words, choosing a candidate to become the official word of the year. 2003’s Word of the Year is, metrosexual, a fashion-conscious heterosexual male. Words of the year are usually new words that enter the American lexicon quickly, well before they’re recognized by dictionaries. Several past Words/Phrases of the Year were: 2002, weapons of mass destruction (WMD); 2001, 9-11; 2000, chad; 1999, Y2K; 1988, E-, as in e-mail, e-business. Words of 2003 runners-up included pre-emptive self-defense (an attack before a possible attack), embed (to place a journalist with troops or a political campaign), zhuzh, tjuzs (to plump up, fluff up or primp), governator, gropenator, gropenführer (the current Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger), weapons of mass deception (the hunt for weapons of mass destruction as a pretext for war), and weapons of (formative, including weapons of mass destruction, weapons of mass distraction). The subcategorical words of the year chosen as well were: MOST USEFUL: flexitarian, a vegetarian who occasionally eats meat. MOST CREATIVE: freegan, a person who eats only what they can get for free. MOST UNNECESSARY: freedom, the noun replacing "French" in phrases or compound nouns such as French fries, French kiss, and French tickler. MOST OUTRAGEOUS: cliterati, a collective noun for feminists or woman-oriented writers or opinion-leaders. MOST EUPHEMISTIC: pre-emptive self-defense. MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED: (word or phrase most likely to be here next year) SARS. LEAST LIKELY TO SUCCEED: (word or phrase least likely to be here next year) tomacco, a poisonous hybrid of tomato and tobacco. BEST REVIVAL: spider hole, an expertly camouflaged hole used by soldiers from which they can strike. This term goes at least back to 1941. Data taken from the American Dialect Society (www.americandialect.org)