'Squeezed middle' is Oxford's word of the year
'Squeezed middle' has been named Oxford Dictionary's word of the year for 2011.
The term, a favourite of British opposition leader Ed Miliband, means "the section of society regarded as particularly affected by inflation, wage freezes, and cuts in public spending during a time of economic difficulty, consisting principally of those people on low or middle incomes."
Each year Oxford University Press in the UK and US put their collective heads together to come up with the word or phrase which 'has attracted a great deal of interest during the year to date'.
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For the first time ever, teams in the US and UK both agreed on the year's top word.
"The speed with which squeezed middle has taken root, and the likelihood of its endurance while anxieties deepen, made it a good global candidate for Word of the Year." an Oxford spokeswoman said.
Many of the phrases on the shortlist this year were political in nature; they included 'Arab Spring', 'Bunga Bunga', 'Occupy' and 'The 99 per cent'.
Other words up for consideration were 'clicktivism', 'Tiger Mother', 'Fracking' and 'Sifi'.
Previous Word of the Year winners have been 'app', 'tweet', 'truthiness' and 'Y2K'.
