Wordbursting at the Seams: We first told you about the word burst phenomena in a blog post here a couple weeks ago, which was followed a day later with Wordbursting Redux.

Linguists must be having a field day tracking the current burst of the phrase "word burst" through the media, most recently landing on CNN.com (Software digs up buzzwords old and new) in article about both the linguistic study of past word bursts and the cultural probing of current word burst trends in blogs, all with an eye toward the holy grail of predictive trend analysis.

The study of word bursts is not new. Geoffrey Nunberg, for one, has been studying such patterns in the media for years, and chronicling them in his excellent Fresh Air commentaries and books. And we at Wordlab have been at the forefront of the word burst phenomenon since before we were born, amassing in the process a few word trend scoops of our own. Namely, that the word or name "snark" is in the early stages of a massive worldwide word burst that will soon put it on everybody's lips.

For those of you who are keeping score, this post contains the following word and phrase totals:

word: 12
burst(s): 10
word burst(s): 8
snark: 5
trend(s): 5
wordbursting: 3
blog(s): 3
Wordlab: 3
buzzwords: 2
Igor: 2
Snark Hunting: 2

Keep an eye out for "snark" as it bolts up the burst meter. Two other exciting word bursts we are tracking aggressively are "Igor" and "Snark Hunting," which appear to be long-term trends.

Remember, you saw it first on Wordlab. And many times after that.