Bruno Aeschbacher reports, on the swisstrans list (Yahoo) that for the first time, Switzerland is voting on a work of the year.
A website lets Swiss vote, and it also has an archive of words of the year in the past, in Germany, Austria, and Liechtenstein. Actually, there is Wort des Jahres (word of the year) and Unwort des Jahres (antiword of the year), and it’s hard to tell the difference. I suppose they are voted on for different bodies. Some words are puzzling – what was the Senfverbot (mustard ban) in Liechtenstein in 2002? The site itself explains: since the football stadium in Vaduz was built, no mustard was supplied with the grilled sausages, and a newspaper used the headline, ‘Wann fällt das Senfverbot, Herr Bürgermeister?’ (When will the mustard ban be lifted, Mr Mayor?) Apparently the reason was to reduce the cleaning effort.