BEST! PHRASE! EVER! Soon the American Dialect Society (ADS) will choose the Word of the Year for 2004.

The WOTY for 2003 was "metrosexual." The year before, it was "weapons of mass destruction," with "blog" earning Most Likely To Succeed. One of this year's favorites appears to be "wardrobe malfunction."

My own recommendations for WOTY consideration include heart (as in "I Heart New York" and I Heart Huckabees), which could also qualify for something like Symbol of the Year or Emoticon of the Year. It's an interesting reversal—taking the "heart" symbol and actually reading it as "heart" instead of "love."

I am also a strong supporter of recognition for Chrismukkah (and other fusions of winter holiday names) and biotch and its various other spellings. Both of those words had significant presence in 2004.

Blog and its relatives (such as "blogosphere") might merit some sort of achievement award for living up to ADS expectations. Shout out appears to have done extremely well in terms of entering the mainstream.

But the phrase that really seemed to come into its own was Best. Episode. Ever. and its variants. The expression, strongly identified with Simpsons fans as well as the Simpsons character Comic Book Guy, got tons of play in many contexts, including blogs, speech, and print media.

It could be that a turning point for this phrase was the Simpsons episode "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show," aired on February 9, 1997. Judging from the extensive commentary at The Simpsons Archive, the episode lampooned how Simpsons-watchers on the Net use the header "Worst Episode Ever." Jaime J. Weinman's January 24, 2000 Salon article "Worst episode ever" refers to that phenomenon: "The harshest critics regularly open their missives with the tagline 'Worst episode ever.'"

Other examples:

A Simpsons episode entitled "Worst Episode Ever" aired on February 4, 2001.

Jim Smith ended a March 21, 2002 review of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Doublemeat Palace" with the phrase "Worst Episode Ever."

In 2004 the phrase was huge. I don't have billions of examples here, yet you know it's true--they're all over the blogosphere! Here are some citations I just grabbed:

"Best. Movie. Ever." (Pete Ashton's Weblog, 7/22/04)

"best Christmas ever" (icCoventry, 12/27/04)

"Best Christmas Gift Ever" (CBS News, 12/29/04)

Do you heart language and The Simpsons? Here's a tribute to "Mmmm..." and here's a August 24, 2004 Gael Fashingbauer Cooper piece on a bunch of Simpsons-related words and phrases, including "D'oh!"