The new decade of the 2010s has barely begun, but already an enterprising Australian has stepped forward to give it a name.
Actually, you can blame an Australian news website (News.com.au), which surveyed its readers and promoted a contest that generated 3,500 suggestions. Rejected were such obvious choices as Tennies, Teenies or Twenteens. “We needed something that communicated a feeling, not just denoted a number,” opined the website. (We assume that Tentions wasn’t the feeling they were after.)
The weak-kneed winner: One-Ders. It was the moniker’s “bright-eyed optimism” that turned the trick, said the judges. After a decade dominated by doom and gloom, it’s apparently time for the can-do spirit of hope to bubble up in a decade called the OneDers. (Strap yourself in for the One-Der Years.)
An IT network engineer submitted One-Ders. His rationale: There is hope for many scientific, humanitarian and environmental breakthroughs; and the number one appears in every year of the new decade.
And let us not forget the decade just ended. The Oh-Ohs? The Oughts? The Noughties? Alas, the 2000s never did have a universally accepted nickname.
