New Delhi, Jan. 7 -- An amusing ritual happens in the word business at the end of every year. Some publishers and other cultural busybodies with too much time to kill (like myself) choose a 'word of the year' that is meant to capture something important in the zeitgeist, a word that distills the twist-and-shout gyrations of culture and society into a single expression, a time capsule (or soap bubble) of communication.

The choice is made through some form of fan voting or editorial discretion. This annual exercise takes place in many languages, including Danish, Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Mandarin, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Ukrainian and, of course, English. Note what's missing.

English is the lingua franca of many c...