Top Words of 2003: It's time to recognize the words that made a difference in our communications this year.

One of our favorite wordsites, yourdictionary.com, has made their year-end Top Ten Word Lists in the following categories:

Top Ten Words of 2003
Top Ten Personal Names of 2003
Top Ten Youthspeak Words
Top Ten Phrases of 2003

Paris Hilton is "on the list" of top ten personal names of 2003, but she's not "embedded" in the top ten words of 2003. There are some bonus words, like "bling bling" which is named the youthspeak phenomenon of the year, having moved from hip hop slang to mainstream slang with its inclusion in the Oxford English Dictionary. Also noted are the top 5 Bush mispronunciations, including Nevada and America, not to mention Eye Rack.

The best new product names listed include, Way Cool, a car window shade that turns white when the temp hits 85 degrees F, and iTunes Music Store by the branding geniuses at Apple. Listed among the worst product names of the year are Poolife (hey, don't shit in the pool) and Silk, a soy milk product, which would be on the list of the best product names if I were making the list.

We're also treated to the top Enron-inspired names, the top Internet words moving into widespread use, the top sports-related words, and the top word trends in Pop Music Names. OK, they even tell us what the most frequently spoken word is in 2003.

Frequency of word use is a good measure of what is going on in the world, and word frequency on the Internet is now measured in word bursts. A comprehensive analysis of words frequently searched in the past year can be found in the Google Zeitgeist, as well as the Top Yahoo! Searches 2003. And, Word Spy keeps a running list of the Top 100 Words of interest on their website, which keeps us wordwise about phishing, flash mobs, metrosexuals, hillbilly heroin and more. Some of these words are reviled on the 2004 List of Banished Words.

Last but not least, the top selling domain name of the year 2003, at $1.3 Million Greenbacks, is men.com. Booyah!