WORDS OF THE YEAR 2005. The results are in! (See PDF for the official version.) This year's ceremony was distinguished by a special tribute to Tom Cruise's effect on the English language. The Blog About Town summary follows:

WORD OF THE YEAR. As determined by the American Dialect Society, the Word of the Year 2005 is truthiness. The term, identified with The Colbert Report, "refers to the quality of stating concepts or facts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true." In competing for the honor, truthiness lost to Katrina in the first round of voting but dominated 66-22 in the run-off after the elimination of podcast, Cruiselex, refugee, brown-out, intelligent design, Heck of a job, and disaster industrial complex.

MOST USEFUL. The winner is podcast, beating out truthiness, patent troll, and lifehack.

MOST CREATIVE. The winner is the wonderful whale tail (the appearance of thong or g-string underwear above a waistband), which whomped flee-ancée 56-38 in a run-off after the elimination of pineosaur and muffin top.

MOST UNNECESSARY. Perhaps to no one's surprise, the winner in this category was K Fed (Kevin Federline), deemed even less necessary than reverse logistics, man date, and pope-squatting.

MOST OUTRAGEOUS. The word crotchfruit (child, children) emerged as the winner, outsensationalizing intelligent design, Whizzinator, Bumper Nutz, and Ex-Lax option.

MOST EUPHEMISTIC. I'm not sure how to say this, but internal nutrition (force-feeding a prisoner) was the non-loser in a field consisting of holistic practitioner, VBIED, extraordinary rendition, holiday tree, and man date.

MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED. Following in the proud tradition of "blog" is sudoku (a type of number puzzle), which overtook podcast in a class that also included folksonomy and Cyber Monday.

LEAST LIKELY TO SUCCEED. Hanging its head in shame is pop-squatting (registering a domain name of a new pope in order to reap a profit), voted to be even less promising than GSAVE, metrospiritual, Cruiselex, and Brangelina.

BEST TOM-CRUISE-RELATED WORD. Gleefully leaping up and down in this special category is jump the couch (to exhibit strange or frenetic behavior), which dramatically outshined Cruisazy and TomKat.

To see how Cruise merited so much special attention, click here.