Jahrhundert-Wörter

This research paper compares two publications with the almost identical title “Hundred Words of the Century” and “Hundred Century-Words”. The first one was published in 1999, the second one in 2023. Except for the almost identical titles, they are totally different. For the older publication, seven celebrities chose the words and 100 renowned researchers from the relevant fields of study or from media dealt with the words. On the other side, a renowned linguist and critic of language use, the youngest-ever holder of the “Duden”-Prize, chose the words under the sometimes quite individualistic criterion ‘As I like it’. He comments those words mostly on only one page, sometimes with very personal and funny associations without any critical apparatus. Out of the hundred words, very few in both publications are identical – such as, “Bikini” or “Wende” (“turnaround” in the former German Democratic Republic). Heringers book is, in any case, a valuable analysis and a very different approach of transferring the results of research into the public.